


Terrible Things

by MalevolentReverie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Race Changes, Angst, Ben Kills Pedophiles, Boston, Control Issues, Dubious Consent, Eventual Romance, F/M, Journalism, Kill All The Pedophiles, Native American Character(s), Sadism, Serial Killers, Smut, Strong Female Characters, They're both stubborn, Travel, U.S. Navy SEALs, Washington, and it's beautiful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-04-08 16:36:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14109534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalevolentReverie/pseuds/MalevolentReverie
Summary: Rey Kenobi, soon-to-be grad in journalism, is determined to solve the mystery of her father's murder on the Pine Ridge Native American Reservation. Ben Solo is an unsettling playboy who takes her virginity and begins following her with deep, obsessive interest. They clash and fight every time they meet, but that's the least of her concerns. She learns about her heritage, Ben's past, and how her idyllic memories of the rez are not necessarily aligned with reality.This story connects to the "Something Wicked" multiverse w/Silas Cooper & Wren Michaels. Discontinued.





	1. The Secret of Rey Kenobi

_In short, the death penalty does not have a place in modern, civilized society. It reflects the worst part of humanity; our bloodthirsty spite; our shortsighted, archaic belief that an eye for an eye is the only path to justice. There is no punishment that will adequately match the heinous act of murder—but taking another life as a toll is like using gasoline to put out a fire. There are monsters among us in society. We must shine light upon them rather than languish in their darkness._

 “Miss?”

Oh—shit. Wrapped up in my thousandth paper about the death penalty. I closed my laptop and smiled up at the stewardess leaning over my seat.

 “Sorry,” I said, “just trying to get another paper done. I’m guessing we’re landing?”

 “Yes, we’ll be in Portland shortly. Thank you for your cooperation.”

I offered her a sarcastic, tight-lipped smile, the same one I gave my ‘friends,’ and she moved on to the next passenger who dared to have an electronic device out. Bitch.

Oregon was as rainy as Isabel told me it’d be. I glared out the plane window in distaste as we landed and taxied down the runway, and continued to scowl up at the sky while waiting for my ride outside the airport. My boiling hot coffee from Starbucks was no comfort, but it did sear my fingers so badly that I had to keep switching gloved hands. Fuck Oregon. What the fuck.

My phone vibrated and I checked my watch to see my mom was trying to call me for the fifth time. I sent her to voicemail as my friend Isabel, the bride to be, pulled up in her fiancé’s black Jaguar.

 “Rey-Rey!” she squealed, out of the car and squeezing me to death before I could blink.

Her miserable excuse for a future husband was in the driver’s seat, pissed off and brooding as usual. Yeah, don’t offer to help with my luggage. Dick.

I squealed back like we did in undergrad for fucking everything—when our Chinese food was early, when Izzy had a new wealthy boytoy to show off to me, when we got into the same sorority. Izzy was all long legs and blonde hair and green eyes; total bombshell. Not that I was Frankenstein’s wife or anything, but college boys loved pretty, ditzy blonde white girls more than glowering Native American ones.

 “You have to tell me everything,” Izzy said. She grabbed my stuff like always, eager to help. “Is your mom totally pissed that you’re going to grad school in Boston? I mean, who turns down a full ride from Northeastern, right?”

 “Fucking Greg wanted me to go to Caltech because he knows the provost.” I touched my updo to make sure none of my long black hair had spilled out and watched Izzy throw my stuff in the Jag’s tiny trunk. “The twins can stay in California if they want but I’m completely sick of it. Poe looks crabby today.”

Izzy shut the trunk with some difficulty and laughed. “He’s waiting to find out if he passed the BAR. Super convenient that he’ll find out right before we get married.”

Snobby lawyer douche. I hugged my best friend again, severely bummed that she was marrying asshole Poe Dameron who had made her cry more than once during their five-year relationship, which was one too many times for me. She climbed in the cramped backseat and insisted I sit up front next to her constipated-looking fiancé. He cast me an icy look as I put on my seatbelt.

 “Still going to die alone, Wretch?”

 “Did your dad buy you this hideous car after the second or third time failing the BAR?” I snapped.

 “Oh my god, can you two wait, like, five minutes before bitching at each other?!” Izzy leaned between the front seats and rolled her eyes. “We’re getting too old for this.”

 “Correction: Poe is getting too old for this.” I wrinkled my face into an ugly smile. “Since, y’know, he’s 30 and still can’t pass the BAR. We’re only 23, Izzy, my golden-haired angel.”

Poe’s babyface contorted into a scowl. “You’re a bitch, Rey.”

 “So are you, daddy’s boy,” I said, putting my feet up on the Jag’s dash.

Isabel was one of my best friends, and she asked me to be her maid of honor, so I had to attend her marriage to Satan. I’d spent most of my college years trying to convince her to dump Poe, not only because he was straight from the bowels of Hell, but because she was way too young to be getting married. She had a job with Pfizer and she’d be a PA soon. She didn’t have to settle.

We were staying with Captain Dickbreath’s family in Portland. He insisted they go there to get married, even though Izzy’s family was from California (where we met in middle school), and her mom was always super sick and had a tough time traveling. Izzy’s older brother Hector was also a golden-haired angel and was driving her up himself. We were united in our hatred of Poe Dameron.

I burst out laughing when we pulled up to his parents’ gaudy mansion, complete with fountains and sports cars in the roundabout. Izzy punched me in the arm but snickered with me when Poe got out of the car.

 “Is Rose here yet?” I asked when Izzy and I got out.

 “Yup—everyone’s here, actually.” Izzy puckered her lips and counted on her fingers. “Rose, Yvonne, Aubrey, and Kayla.”

Rose was another good friend of mine—the others I could take or leave. She had the dark cynicism I needed when Izzy’s pluckiness was driving me nuts.

Everyone descended upon us like a flock of rabid screeching birds when we got in the house. It was a flurry of blonde and brown and red hair and girly perfume and both Izzy and I were swept over. Rose tore me away from Aubrey’s bone-crushing hug and swung me out of the crowd, still oddly strong for barely being five feet tall.

 “Rey!” she groaned. “Thank god you’re here! I was going to punch Yvonne in the fucking throat if she didn’t stop talking.” She held me at arm’s length, adjusting her glasses, and beamed. “You look go good! We’ll turn pale together in Boston.”

Rose was another old friend of mine who I met in high school. She was ridiculously smart and the only reason I passed my biology and chemistry classes in undergrad, not to mention sarcastic and funny as hell. We were going to Northeastern together, me for journalism and her for biochem.

 “I don’t think either of you can be pale,” said Kayla, one of Izzy’s friends. She was cool, too, but I didn’t know her as well. Could’ve been twins with Izzy.

I did a skin-tone test with Rose, who had the same permanent deep tan I did from her Asian parents. “…Well we can get _kind of_ pale.”

Yvonne sidled over to compare with us, too, lining up her much darker arm on the other side of mine. “You’re all pale as hell compared to me.”

 “Wow, this is a fascinating conversation.” Aubrey threw an arm around Izzy’s shoulders, far and away the tallest of all of us. “Not like there are a million other things we could talk about.”

And we did keep chatting on our way upstairs to unpack. No one had brought their significant others; most of them were busy or couldn’t get away from work. Yvonne’s husband, Jamal, worked in Silicon Valley for Facebook. Aubrey’s boyfriend, Ivan, had some kind of football camp at Ole Miss where he was the quarterback. Last I knew, Kayla had a steady girlfriend, and Rose was usually single like me.

The mansion was huge, with ten bedrooms and eight bathrooms. We were all still sharing rooms, which was okay with me because I hated being alone. Rose and I were at the end of the hall on the second floor, next to Izzy and Kayla’s room, and Aubrey shared a room with Yvonne. Everyone went into Rose and I’s room, still talking while we worked on unpacking my stuff. The wedding festivities were going on for two weeks before the big day.

 “How’s your mom, Rey?” Yvonne asked just as I finished unpacking.

I shrugged. “The same. Still thinks the sun rises and sets by Cory and Zeke. Greg still thinks she’s a perfect angel. She’s still saving the world one cavity at a time and he’s still jazzing up people’s webpages or whatever.”

Izzy stacked my suitcases on the other end of the huge room. It felt like a hotel, with light tan carpeting and soft blue walls and framed pictures of sailboats and seashells. I sat on the edge of the bed next to Rose and tried not to think about mom. She wasn’t happy that I was leaving for Boston, and even less happy that I was stopping in South Dakota. Greg was torn between supporting me and supporting her.

 “Are you still visiting the rez?” Izzy asked, sitting on the other side of me. “Bet Darlene’s pissed about that.”

 “Someone has to figure out what happened to her dad.” Rose rested her head on my shoulder and sighed. “I wish I could go with you. Be safe.”

Izzy laughed and flopped back on the bed. “That’s only part of why she’s going. She a _lso_ wants to find a Native guy to bring home and marry.”

 “No, I don’t!” I snapped, punching her in the arm. “I just want to… talk to one. I barely remember Pine Ridge, and my mom just told me awful stories about it.”

Poe popped up in the doorway and we all stopped talking to stare at him. He hung there for a minute, then cleared his throat and nodded towards Izzy.

 “Are we all going out for dinner?” he asked.

Izzy shrugged. “Yeah, but we were going to have a girl’s night. Do you mind?”

 “Of course he minds,” Rose said tersely before I could.

 “That’s fine.” Poe glared between Rose and I and left without another word.

Yvonne exhaled and rolled her eyes. “He’s as pleasant as ever. Anyway, where are we going, Izzy?”

Izzy hopped up off the bed and twirled, clapping excitedly. “There’s a new club in Portland called Vapor and I got us all VIP access! I know it’s not really your cup of tea, Rose, so our booth is in the back corner away from the crowd. But we get free drinks and food all night!”

Aubrey and I were the club rats and we both squealed happily and hugged Izzy. Rose wasn’t a huge fan of the bar or club scene but she’d tag along to make Izzy happy. Kayla and Yvonne both seemed excited, too, and we all started chattering about what we were going to wear and what time we were leaving. I had a couple of outfits and told Kayla I would loan her something.

Mom tried to call me again and I finally sent her a text telling her I was still alive and in one piece. I rummaged through my stuff until I found a short red dress and gave Kayla a black one with three-quarter sleeves. I slipped on black heels and put my thick black hair up in a clip while Rose used the vanity in the bathroom to put on her makeup. She glanced at me, pressing her lips together.

 “Could you try to look a little uglier?” she grumbled.

 “That’s pretty hard for me.” I turned to check my reflection and leaned in to make sure my makeup was still on point. “Stick with me. We’ll have fun tonight.”

Everyone else was wearing different length and color dresses. I helped Rose with her jewelry and checked Izzy’s eyeliner for her before we all left the house together to take a limo to Vapor. It was good to see my friends and get away from school for a while. I needed this.


	2. The Hidden Club Rat

It had been a dog’s age since I last stepped into a night club. Between college and my part time job selling overpriced lingerie at Victoria’s Secret, I hadn’t had much time to indulge in my favorite pastime. Izzy was always more than happy to tag along but we’d have to bribe Rose into going—and more than once, I threw her over my shoulder and forced her to come with us.

Vapor wasn’t a seedy club like the one where I celebrated my 21st birthday. The people waiting outside to get in were all dressed nicely, and there were only a few drunk girls crying. Rose and Izzy hooked their arms through mine and pressed their heads against mine as we came up to the bouncer, a burly guy with a shaved head. He nodded to Izzy and stepped aside to let all of us in while the next couple in line gave us dirty looks. I winked at them. Enjoy the cold, fuckheads.

It was muggy inside—typical for a popular club. The faint smell of alcohol wafted around us as we were escorted to our VIP booth through booming music and dizzying strobe lights. Our personal attendant took our coats and went to get us some bar food to munch on. Izzy shrieked with excitement and dragged me into the plush booth and Rose squeezed in beside me, already nervously picking at her fingernails. I swatted her hand like always to make her stop.

 “This is so cool!” Izzy practically shouted in my ear. “Wanna get drinks?”

 “Duh!” I scanned the nearby crowd for desperate guys hanging on the fringes and nudged Rose. “C’mon, Doll, we’re going to get some free shots.”

She groaned. “No, I hate doing this! It’s so mean!”

 “Not like we’re forcing them,” Izzy laughed.

We scooted out of the booth to prey on the wallets of unsuspecting men. Kayla tagged along, and Yvonne and Aubrey went to dance. I was a bit of a pro at scoring free alcohol and had even more success with Izzy beside me, flipping her long blonde hair and batting her eyelashes. Rose wasn’t a heartless piece of shit, so she would sit on the fringes and pay for her own drinks.

I leaned over to whisper in Izzy’s ear, tugging her close. “First one to get five drinks has to buy a margarita bowl for the booth.”

 “That’s not even a challenge, Rey.”

First, we descended on two guys with popped collars—the easiest victims. Izzy and I sat on either side of them and touched their arms, confident enough to get away with it, and they both instantly broke into wide smiles and started chatting us up. Kayla sat with us, too, but they were too interested in Izzy and I to pay any attention to her. She huffed and drifted away to find her own while Izzy and I worked our magic the same way we learned in undergrad.

It was easy; I didn’t even have to ask. He offered and I asked for my favorite: gin and tonic. It was like taking candy from a baby, and within five minutes I found an excuse to wander off with my drink and Izzy caught up with me, sloshing around her whiskey sour. Rose trailed behind us but took a grudging sip of my freebie.

 “What’s next?” Izzy asked. “Sit at the bar and wait for some bro to come over?”

I cocked my head, pursing my lips. “That’s so easy, though. Let’s do something harder.” I laughed and pulled her closer. “Remember when I took some guy’s beer on the dance floor?”

 “Cmon, Rey, that only worked because he was already shitfaced.” She hung back, clinging to my arm and scanning the crowd. “But if you’re feeling confident…”

 “Doll, you try!” I said.

Rose had her arm linked through mine and scowled. “No, that’s not fair and—"

 “Hey.”

It was deafeningly loud all around us, but his voice was deep and penetrating, and right behind me. Izzy and I exchanged a glance and rolled our eyes before turning around to face the stranger. We were used to guys coming up and offering us drinks, and they were the ones who followed you around all night. Rose kind of sidled behind me to hide.

He was tall as hell, with jet black hair pulled back in a half-ponytail. It was hard to make out his eye color, but they looked greenish to me, and they were surprisingly focused on me instead of Izzy. He had a moustache with a beard just on his chin and was taking a sip of a beer. Broad shoulders, all muscle-bound. Underdressed in a AC/DC t-shirt and dark jeans. _Huge_ hands. And not conventionally attractive, with a big nose and sloping jawline, but somehow… magnetic.

Izzy spoke before I could. “Can we help you?”

 “You can’t.” He drank from his beer again and gestured towards me, never looking away. “You can. Let me buy you a drink.”

Both Izzy and I burst out laughing and leaned on each other for support. Rose sighed, muttering under her breath about how rude we were.

I put a hand over my heart, giggling. “Um… no. Sorry. I don’t take drinks from guys with ponytails—they usually slip roofies in it.”

The stranger reached back and tugged out his ponytail without taking his eyes off me yet again and stretched the band over his wrist. His hair came down just above his shoulders and he casually swept it into place. I laughed again, quieter than before. Quit staring. Give up.

 “My name is Ben,” he said. “What’s yours?”

 “None of your business,” Izzy said. She tugged me back. “C’mon, let’s go dance.”

I held fast, but Izzy was an oddly strong woman and she dragged me away from Ben. He stared after us, still nursing his beer, until the crowd eclipsed us from view.

 “He was kind of cute,” Rose yelled, trying to avoid all the people dancing around us.

Izzy shook her head. “You’re crazy, Doll. Rey can get way hotter guys than that.”

We all shrugged off the weird encounter and went back to wrangling free drinks. Rose tailed after me and Kayla reemerged to follow Izzy around. I used the typical tricks, like flirting with the bartender and lying about some random guy spilling my drink. After a few fibs about it being my birthday, I was up to my eyeballs in alcohol and had a pleasant buzz going on. I polished off a Long Island at the bar while Rose talked to some guy, and a person sat beside me.

 “Tell me your name.”

I glanced up, stirring my ice, and rolled my eyes. Ben was back with another beer. Apparently this fuckwit wasn’t going to give up.

 “No go, Ponytail,” I said.

 “It’s hot as fuck in here and I hate being hot.” He motioned towards the bartender, who nodded and started making a drink. “Is it ugly? Like Matilda?”

 “No. And if you’re trying to sleep with me, you’re doing a piss-poor job.”

Ben shrugged. “You’re not the first hot woman to reject me, and you won’t be the last. But since you’re just manipulating strangers into giving you free booze, anyway, you might as well talk to me.”

Ugh, I hated men who wouldn’t give up. I pointedly rolled my eyes again but softened a bit when the bartender set down a gin and tonic in front of me. Yum. Maybe I could stick around for a few minutes.

 “Fine,” I acquiesced, leaning back with my drink. “My name is Rey.”

 “Like the bird?”

Oh, hilarious. I moved to stand up but he grabbed my arm and yanked me back into my seat. He turned to face me, finishing his beer. I bristled.

 “Don’t touch me,” I hissed. “I’ll break your fucking fingers.”

 “Yeah, whatever.” He had another beer the instant he finished his. Efficient bartender. “So where are you from? What do you do?”

I wasn’t used to men being confident around me—and I also wasn’t used to them touching me. I liked teasing them, and I’d never found anyone worth sleeping with. It wasn’t important to me. Getting shit drunk and driving them crazy was way more fun than waking up with a stranger and regretting it.

I sipped my drink, eyeing Ben suspiciously. “I’m going to grad school. I’m a half-journalist. Don’t tell me what you do, because I don’t care.”

 “Yeah, I know.” He drank his beer and leaned on the bar. “Just do you know, the bitchy hot girl schtick doesn’t work outside of places like this. You’ll end up with some ancient millionaire and have to fuck him _at least_ —” He paused, tilting his hand side to side. “Twice a year.”

 “Wow, you’re a regular Casanova.”

 “Only to women like you. Anyway, where are you from?”

 “Born in South Dakota, lived in California, moving to Boston.” I put a hand up to stop him, narrowing my eyes. “What d’you mean, ‘women like me’? Not wanting to talk to some random guy in a club doesn’t make me a bitchy hot girl—though I do appreciate the backhanded compliment.”

Why was I even talking to him? I looked around for Rose and Izzy and was annoyed to find both of them had abandoned me. Izzy was probably already three sheets to the wind, and I needed to find her before she went home with some creep. Poor gullible Iz.

Ben shook his head, swallowing more beer. “Didn’t say it did, and you’re welcome. You just, you know.” He sat up ramrod straight and frowned sarcastically. “It’s your body language, all wound up and stiff—and scamming guys for free drinks is a pretty bitchy thing to do. Blowing off a dude who looks like Keanu Reeves’ ugly younger brother is just Darwinism at work.”

I almost choked on my drink trying to stifle a laugh. He had a point. And he was kind of funny. He smiled back at me and his gaze lingered on my lips.

 “Your self-deprecating shtick must work if you’re trying it on someone way out of your league,” I said.

 “Might as well try, right?”

 “Might as well.” I studied him for a few seconds, drunk enough that I was becoming mildly interested. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s your tale of woe?”

 “REY!”

Izzy seemed to appear out of nowhere. She grabbed my arm and yanked me out of the chair before I could blink and I quickly lost sight of Ben in the crowd. I still had my gin and tonic, though, and I finished it and left it on a random table as Izzy pulled me further into the throng. Whatever. Guys like him were a dime a dozen.

One of our favorite songs was playing, and soon we were joined by the other girls. Yvonne had a rum and coke for me that I finished just as a guy came around with a tray of shots. We all took them at the same time but Aubrey and Rose ended up spitting theirs out, and we were all shrieking with laughter. It was like freshman year all over again—just without the crying and puking.

Izzy and I had a high alcohol tolerance. We were both starting to stumble, but Kayla was passed out in the booth next to Yvonne. Aubrey was wolfing down nachos and I saw Rose back at the bar with the guy she’d been talking to earlier. I watched them suspiciously from afar and made sure to tell Aubrey to watch them before Izzy and I went to the bathroom together.

 “Fuck!” Izzy hissed when we were done and checking our makeup in the mirror. “Fucking… Poe took my cigarettes.”

I smeared some lip gloss on, struggling to concentrate. “Told you he’d a douchebag.”

She shot me a dirty look and rummaged through my clutch. I was trying to quit, but I needed a way to relax from all the stress of college. The harsh lights overhead made the dark circles under my eyes look like I’d been decked in the face.

 “Menthols?” Izzy popped a cigarette out and stuck it behind her ear. “Poe told me they—”

 “ _Poe_ doesn’t know everything,” I interrupted. I snatched my clutch back to look for my mascara.

Izzy was quiet for a few minutes while I finished fixing my face. She unzipped her clutch to touch up her lip gloss, too, then suddenly threw it back in her bag and stormed out of the bathroom.

Fuck Poe. He turned Izzy into such a whiny little bitch. I staggered back from the sink and shoved past a gaggle of girls on my way out of the bathroom. I’d tell her what’s what. She was marrying some dumb prissy fuck with no good qualities, and someone needed to—

I bumped into a familiar face on the way back: Ben, sans beer. He grabbed me when I almost fell flat on my ass and I angrily wriggled out of his grasp, flinging myself into the wall in the process. A couple people passing stared at us as Ben tried to keep me from running off. I’d lost sight of Izzy and I needed to start a screaming match with her before my anger ebbed away.

 “Where are you stomping off to?” Ben laughed, holding me firmly by the forearms.

 “Let go of me!” I snarled. “I went to self-defense classes, and I’ll…” I stumbled into the wall again and struggled to lift a leg to kick him. “…I’ll wreck you!”

 “I was a Navy SEAL, but I’m shaking in my boots.” He looked around, ignoring my struggling. “Since you’re completely shitfaced and here with a group of other girls, I’m guessing you’re fighting with one. Is it the blonde?”

Fucking… asshole! I was drunk, but not weak, and I tore my wrists free from Ben’s grasp. His hands were on me again and I was getting more and more pissed off. I swatted at him and he had the audacity to laugh at me like I was a fucking child, so I did what any reasonable person would do—and punched him right in the jaw.

A passing group of guys hooted and hollered and laughed as I panted and glared daggers at Ben. He blinked in shock, touching the spot where I’d punched him, and we stared at each other. It probably hurt me more than it hurt him, but I wouldn’t let him see my trembling hand.

 “Did you just punch me?” Ben asked.

I nodded and took an ‘intimidating’ step forward. “Yes, and there’s more where that came from!”

The room was swimming. Maybe I’d overestimated my ability to hold my liquor.

He kept staring at me without saying anything, massaging his jaw. “You ever seen a movie with love at first sight?”

I scowled up at Ben, struggling to understand what he was implying, then he abruptly shoved me against the wall. His mouth was on mine and my rage channeled into kissing him instead of hunting down my best friend to start a dramatic fight. I fisted his shirt in my hands to pull him closer, jamming my tongue in his mouth so he knew who was in control. He groaned and went to grab my hair.

 “No!” I snapped, pulling back so fast that my head hit the wall. “Don’t touch my hair.”

He growled and kissed me aggressively. “Like I said—bitchy hot girl.”

I pulled on his hair, breaking our kiss again and forcing him to look me in the eyes. His green irises looked wild and hungry and I savored the moment I left him high and dry.

 “That’s Bitchy Hot _Woman_ , Ponytail,” I corrected.

 “Rey?!”

Ben turned, letting me down from the wall, and I peeked around him to see Izzy standing there with her goddamn piece of shit fiancé. The menthol was half-burned and behind her ear, and her mouth was hanging open. Poe was eyeing Ben suspiciously.

 “Sorry,” Ben said, “I didn’t mean to interrupt your drunken fight.”

Izzy huffed. “I can’t believe you left me to make out with some random bar crawler!”

 “Me?!” I echoed. “You left me in the bathroom!” I glared at Poe and pointed to his smug ugly mug. “And you called this asshole to our girl’s night!”

 “Well someone has to be the DD!” She folded her arms, rolling her eyes. “I should’ve known I’d find you in the corner teasing the slimiest guy in the club.”

I jerked forward, furious, but Ben grabbed my arms before I could swing at Izzy. Poe touched the small of her back and looked at me like I’d crawled out of a sewer with extra limbs.

 “You’re a BITCH!” I spat.

 “No, you’re a bitch!”

Ben twisted my arms behind my back. “Okay, you’re both drunk and being stupid.” He nodded towards Poe, who he towered over. “Is there somewhere I can bring her? A hotel?”

Izzy shook her head furiously. “No, she’s not welcome in my house. She can go to hell.”

Poe laughed, oddly nervous, and leaned closer to Izzy. “He’s right, babe, you two are just a little drunk and you need to sleep it off. Let’s all go home and—”

My best friend turned on her heel and stormed off again. Poe glanced between the two of us for a moment before chasing after her and they were swallowed by the crowd.

I wriggled away from Ben again, wavering as I turned to look up at him expectantly. “So where do you live?”


	3. The Bungalow Encounter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> like i said, different formula than the other stories  
> and these two are dysfunctional lmfao
> 
> part of the end got cut off!

 “So… Do you want to go to a hotel?”

Ben and I were in an Uber on our way… somewhere. Rose and Yvonne were blowing up my phone demanding to know what happened and who I left with and where I was going. I’d stormed out of Vapor without saying anything to them. Selfish, but even sober, I didn’t care. I was drunk enough that scaring the shit out of my friends didn’t seem like a big deal.

I glared up at him. “Do I look like a prostitute to you?”

 “Yes.” He laughed when I punched him in the arm and rubbed the back of his head. “I just don’t usually bring women back to my place, y’know?”

 “Then they can’t find you for a paternity test,” I said acidly, texting back Rose.

 “Are you always this friendly, Rey?”

 “This is me trying my best.” I put my phone back in my clutch and peered out the window. “I told everyone that I’m with you, and Yvonne’s dad is a colonel in the Navy—so if you were going to rape or murder me, I suggest you don’t.”

The driver peered at us through the rearview mirror. “Um… is everything ok back there?”

Ben nodded and waved him off. “Yeah.” He looked at me, kind of like he was deliberating, then leaned toward the front seat. “Let me give you my address.”

We weren’t in the car much longer. The Uber guy seemed to get more and more nervous as we went down increasingly quiet streets, and I had to admit that it was creeping me out, too. Ben struck me as the type to have a run-down apartment with clothes flung all over the floor. We were passing little houses and our final turn was down a quiet dead-end street.

I tapped the driver’s shoulder. “Can you do me, like, a huge favor? If I don’t call for an Uber tomorrow morning by eleven, call the police and tell my mother I love her.”

The guy laughed uncomfortably as we stopped outside a tiny log-cabin type of house. The lights were all off and I noticed there were no neighbors around. It set off alarms in my head, because I wasn’t a complete dumbass, but I was still pretty drunk and I figured the threat about Yvonne’s dad was good enough. I saluted the driver and clambered out of the car, staggering to my feet on the cracked sidewalk and splashing my heels in a puddle.

 “Fuck!” I hissed. I groped for my clutch to text Rose and let her know Ben’s exact address. “Hey… Doll.” I paused, furrowing my brow, watching Ben get out of the car before continuing out loud to myself. “Dead-end street… if I’m chopped up into pieces… make sure Izzy gets my middle finger.”

The car drove off, leaving Ben and I alone on the dark street. He took out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one, which I gratefully accepted. I teetered on my heels while he lit the cigarette for me, leaning in close and shielding the flame from the wind with a cupped hand. We both stood back and looked at one another as he lit his.

 “I’m not having sex with you,” I said, exhaling a plume of silver smoke.

Ben took a long drag of his cigarette and the wind took his exhaust. “You think?”

I hesitated on the next pull, unnerved by his penetrating gaze. He raised his eyebrows like he was imploring me to reply, then broke out into a grin and started laughing. I scowled.

 “That’s not funny,” I snapped. “I barely know you.”

He shrugged, and his cheeks caved with the next inhalation. “It’s a little funny.”

I dropped my cigarette and extinguished in with my heel before turning to check out his house. Small, yeah. It had a porch with a rocking chair and a light near the door. There were overgrown shrubs ringed around the house that obscured the windows. I sighed and started up the stone path to the door.

 “Well, let’s get this over with,” I said. “I sent Rose my final wishes.”

 “You don’t have a lot of one-night stands, do you?”

 “I’ve had zero ‘stands’ of any sort.” I tugged the hem of my dress as Ben stepped up next to me on the porch. “None of you are worthy of _this_.” I gestured dramatically down my body and stumbled.

He rolled his eyes as he unlocked the door. “You’re bizarre.”

The rickety red door groaned inward and Ben reached past me to flick on the lights. I toddled inside, desperately kicking off my heels and spinning around to get a good look at the room. It had some random mismatched furniture, including a green couch and two black chairs, and a huge carpet with flowers printed on it was squishing under my feet. No pictures or decorations, really, but he had a TV with a video game system of some kind.

I shuffled into the kitchen as Ben shut the front door and locked it. Nothing exciting; basic necessities. I obnoxiously opened up cabinets to rifle through his stuff and checked both the oven and dishwasher for any suspicious things. I paused on the fridge before dramatically flinging it open.

Empty. Lame. I leaned back and turned to see Ben standing in the kitchen doorway, hands in his pockets. He was just watching me—quiet and still.

 “No body parts,” I said, shrugging. “Got any chips?”

 “Nope. I just pass through here when I travel.” He walked past me and bent over to take a bottle of vodka out from a cabinet, wiggling it to entice me. “But we can get blackout drunk and order pizza.”

I gaped and covered my mouth. “Oh my god. Maybe this _is_ love at first sight.”

He laughed and started to talk again, but I snatched the bottle of vodka and twisted the cap off to take a swig like it was water. Ben blinked in surprise and I tilted the bottle towards him so he could take a drink, too. He held it with both hands and I giggled when it dribbled down his chin.

Ben tore the bottle away from me and slammed it down on the counter. He tangled his long fingers in my hair and kissed me, hard and aggressive, scraping his teeth against mine. I squeaked when he nipped my lower lip and he crushed me into the counter. Fuck—Jesus Christ!

I shoved him back. He didn’t go far and continued hovering over me, completely in my space. His hands were locked on the counter to keep me in place and his breath reeked of vodka. I was nervous for the first time around a man and I didn’t like it. He was forceful and blunt and I didn’t make him stutter.

 “Where’s my pizza?!” I slurred. I grabbed the bottle to drink again and slipped out from under his arms, heading for the hallway. “And where do I sleep?”

I found a door between the kitchen and hall, but Ben swatted my hand away from the handle. He was herding me down the hallway. My clutch with my phone was out on the kitchen counter.

His bright green eyes studied me. “…You’re not really a virgin—are you?”

The house was mostly dark. I’d never been in such a dangerous position before and I wished I’d called Doll and asked her to bring me home. But Ben seemed harmless, maybe because of all the alcohol. My toes brushed the carpet in the hallway but I didn’t dare take my eyes off this perfect stranger.

 “I’m not,” I lied. “I was kidding.”

 “Ah. I figured.” Ben took out his own phone and clicked around on it. “What kind of pizza do you like?”

I relaxed a bit. “Hawaiian. And I want garlic knots. Cheesecake.”

He glanced up at me and smiled. “This is turning into an expensive sleepover.”

 “My presence is worth every penny.”

Ben ordered the food on his phone and followed me as I explored the hallway. There were two doors opposing one another and a curled set of stairs up to another floor. I leaned on my tiptoes and looked up, trying to see the top, but it was blanketed in darkness. Hmm.

He took the vodka from me again to take a long drink. He hardly flinched. I swiped it back and tried to drink twice as much to prove how badass I was.

 “What’s up there?” I asked.

 “It’s a loft. Full of junk.” Ben jerked his head to the left. “The bathroom is under the stairs, and my bedroom is over there.”

 “Subtle. But I can sleep there.”

I stumbled into the door and opened it up to reveal his bedroom. More carpet, and I fucking hated carpet. Vacuuming all the time? Why? It was beige and his bed was huge and I gasped when I saw the grey down comforter across it. I ran inside and leapt on the plush, crinkly softness. Ahhh.

Ben shut the door. “Comfortable?”

 “Yes—I can’t believe you have down!” I rolled over, wrapping myself up in the comforter.

He took back the bottle of alcohol again and drank some more, watching me rolling around like a cat in heat. I turned on my back and tried to pull down my dress again to cover my thighs. His room was more or less empty, save for a nightstand with a lamp, and a dresser against the wall. I slowly sat up, trying to ignore the spinning room. Maybe… maybe I’d made a bad choice.

I watched him as he circled the bed, taking another gulp before setting it on the nightstand. He shifted on his feet and sat next to me.

 “You should go to sleep,” he said. “I’ll wake you up when the pizza’s here.”

 “We should make out.”

 “I don’t dick around with virgins.”

Fucking jerk. I ground my jaw irately and sat up to grab his arm with both hands. Ben raised an eyebrow and took another swig of alcohol. I’d seen it before. He was trying to get drunk, too, so when we fooled around he wouldn’t have to feel guilty. Usually I rejected them before that happened.

 “I told you I’m not,” I said. I tugged his arm. What was I doing?

Ben examined me again, like a robot. “You are, Rey.” He leaned over me, hands on either side of my head, smiling. “But I’ll give you want you want.”

His mouth was on mine again, hot and heady. I ran my fingers through his thick black hair this time and dragged him on top of me. His shoulders were so broad that they blocked out the weak light from the window but I didn’t care. I clawed for him, yanking him closer by the front of his shirt, and wrapped my long legs around his hips. I’d fuck with him. He’d never forget me.

Ben tore the comforter away from me to wrap both of us inside it, and his tongue swept inside my mouth as he pressed himself between my legs. I moaned when I felt hard pressure at the apex of my thighs and wriggled against him. He laughed into my mouth and grasped my entire jaw in one hand, pulling back to look me in the eyes. His green irises glowed.

 “I’m going to enjoy this,” he whispered.

 “I’ll make sure you don’t.”

I’d become a bit of an aficionado in teasing men. I knew how long to drag it out and where to stop them, and I only had a few bad encounters. One of my friends was always around to scream and throw the guy off me and he’d be ostracized at parties forever after.

The blankets twisted around Ben and I made it hard to move. He wouldn’t let me take control of the kissing like I usually did and rotated his hips into mine, pinning me down and driving me crazy. I didn’t like it at all. I wanted to be out in the open, on top, not panting underneath him like a cheap whore. Irritated, I yanked on his hair to make him stop and he growled.

 “Turn over,” I demanded.

He pulled my hair in retaliation, glaring down at me. “You’re staying right where you are.”

Mother… fucker! I let go of Ben’s mop to slap him across the face and he gave me another bruising kiss in return. He grabbed my throat instead of my hair and squeezed until I gasped into his mouth and my eyes rolled back in my head. I arched up against him, weirdly turned on, and dug my long nails into his chest. His muscles rippled and he abruptly released me to leave a train of love bites on my neck.

 “I want you,” he growled. “I have to have you.”

 “Not the first and won’t be the last.”

 “I’ll be the first and the last.” Ben reached under my dress to tug my panties down, green eyes searching mine. “You’re mine, Rey.”

I didn’t know what was coming over me—maybe the alcohol, but I was used to drunkenly fooling around—but I groped around for Ben’s belt and pulled it loose. I shimmied his pants down past his thighs and brazenly slipped my hand through his boxers to see how big his dick was. He groaned in my ear and bucked his hips as I curled my fingers around the shaft, gauging if it was worth my time.

 “Seven inches?” I guessed aloud. I squeezed gently, and he buried his face in my neck, panting. “Thick, too. Good for you.”

 “You’re so fucking weird,” he moaned, thrusting desperately into my grasp.

I drew my thumb across the sticky tip and defaulted to my usual method of getting off and leaving whatever poor sap I was with high and dry. Ben’s breath quickened, and he bit down on my shoulder as I drew my hand up and down at a torturously slow pace. I’d get him to the edge, then insist he go down on me, and pretend to fall asleep after. Foolproof.

He shook his head and tore my wrist away from his cock to pin it next to my head. He loomed over me, eyes wild and bright, and I glanced down to see he was stroking it himself now.

 “Making me watch you jerk off is pretty weird,” I said, squirming.

Ben smirked, and his eyes rolled back. “I know what you’re trying to do, and it isn’t going to work.”

We’d see about _that_. I struggled again, trying to get out from under him, and he pinned my other hand next to my head, laughing. Funny?! This wasn’t funny!

 “You’re creepy!” I snapped.

He buried his face in my neck again, body flat against mine. I could feel his warm breath on my ear and… something else. Heat flushed my cheeks when he prodded my entrance and the flesh gave way a couple of centimeters. I squeezed his hands with mine and swallowed hard, heart pounding, mind spinning and thoughts totally aflutter. Ben’s Adam’s apple bobbed against my shoulder.

It wasn’t how I imagined my first time. I shifted my hips to give him better access, and neither of us said anything. He tentatively pressed forward again, taking more of me, easing inside like he was worried I’d refuse if he moved too fast. His hands slid off mine and wrapped around me and he kissed my neck tenderly. I set my trembling hands on his ribs under his shirt.

Ben shifted, and I drew a sharp breath when he was suddenly buried halfway inside me. He was warm. A guttural groan rumbled in his throat and he jerked forward, and I was all at once not a virgin anymore. Huh. Not a big deal like health class insisted it was.

I wriggled underneath him, wincing in discomfort. “Um… condom?”

 “Shh.” He touched my jaw to turn my head enough that he could kiss me on the lips again, sweeping his tongue into my mouth as his hips moved faster. “I’ll pull out.”

 “That’s not gonna help me if you have AIDS or syphilis or—”

His green eyes caught mine, and he squeezed my cheeks to shut me up. “Quiet, Rey.”

The doorbell rang. Ben completely ignored it and kept going. It felt good and I didn’t want him to stop, but the thought of getting pregnant was completely terrifying. I tried to talk, and he kissed me hard to shut me up. Asshole. I dug my fingernails into his ribs but that just made him fuck me harder.

He slipped a big hand under my butt to prop me up at a different angle. “You’re so fucking lucky this is your first time.”

 “Why?” I breathed.

 “I choke women who fight back.” He seized my jaw in one hand and squeezed, eyeing my lips. “Or do worse. Now pay attention. You have to come.”

 “You choked me earlier. I didn’t hate it.”

Ben paused for a second, raising his eyebrows. “You didn’t?”

I shrugged. He stared at me like he was seeing the sun for the first time and slowly curled his fingers around my neck. My pulse throbbed in my ears as he gradually tightened his grip.

 “Like I said,” he whispered, watching me gasp, “love at first sight.”

The doorbell rang again, but neither of us cared. The night melted into a pleasurable blur, and I finished with Ben's fingers squeezing the life out of me. I refused to let him pull out.


	4. The Mystery of Ben

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is my only protagonist with balls

_Fuck._ Major headache.

I rolled over in bed, groaning and blindly waving my hands to keep the sun out of my eyes. It was hot as hell and I was tangled up naked in the sheets, and no one was lying next to me. The musty smell of sweat and cum hung in the air and I groaned again as I remember what I’d done last night. Or, more accurately, _who_ I’d done last night.

Pain jolted through my eyeballs when I unwillingly opened them. I swore under my breath and covered my mouth when I sat up to keep from vomiting. The bottle of vodka was on the nightstand and my red dress was in a pile on the floor with my bra and panties. Ben, and all traces of him, was nowhere to be seen. What a huge shock _that_ was.

The girls had blown up my phone all night, including Izzy. She apologized a couple of times and begged me to come home, and Rose threatened to drive to the house and break in. I shot back a couple of texts and asked Izzy to come get me so we could talk things over. It wasn’t our first drunk fight and it wouldn’t be the last, so we’d get over it.

I figured I’d drop the bomb about losing my virginity in person. It was a huge deal, since I’d been serious about waiting until I met someone from my own culture. I stepped out of bed and stretched, popping my joints, and checked my body like I was expecting something to have changed. It did feel good—really good. I was surprised Ben had been able to make me come.

Most guys were intimidated by me, and Ben’s confidence and aggression were refreshing. He wasn’t afraid to tell me ‘no’ and more importantly, he wasn’t afraid to take what he wanted.

There was no way I was wearing my dress home in my walk of shame. I put on my bra and panties and rummaged through Ben’s stuff until I found a flannel and tapered sweatpants to steal. He had my number so he could shoot me a text to get them back. I wandered out of the bedroom to the bathroom just across the hall to fix my hair and run some paste over my teeth.

My braid had come loose. I worked the knots free and fanned my thick black hair across my shoulders, then drew it up into a half ponytail. I stole some toothpaste and used a finger to rub it all around my mouth, washing out the taste of vodka and Ben’s mouth. Thankfully I wasn’t drunk enough to suck his dick. He didn’t deserve it.

My neck was covered in hickies and he’d actually bitten my collarbone and shoulder. I had vague bruises on my wrists and forearms where Ben fought to keep me pinned down the second time we had sex. I turned and tugged down the sweatpants to see the same kinds of marks on the back of my thighs and my butt. It was hot. I loved it.

The house was empty. I yawned as I went into the kitchen to find cereal or something, maybe coffee, and wondered where Ben had even gone. I was in his house and he barely knew me. After checking a few empty cabinets, I went back to the fridge to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, then yawned again and opened the freezer.

Smack dab in the middle shelf, wrapped in saran, was a severed pale pink penis.

I blinked a few times, standing in the cold, staring at it. It didn’t blink back. It was just chilling in Ben’s fridge. It wasn’t that big and looked like it had shriveled from ice burn.

No. No way. It had to be a small dildo he wanted cold. Ben was clearly a kinky dude so that wouldn’t be too out of character. I hesitated but reached out to poke it, hoping to feel pliant rubber. It didn’t give way. It was frozen solid, and I could see flecks of blood near the base.

I shook my head and slammed the freezer door shut. “No. No.” I spun around to wash my hands in the sink, scraping at my fingers, and kept shaking my head on the way back to his bedroom. “This isn’t happening. I’m hallucinating.”

It didn’t make sense. I grabbed my dress and texted Izzy again to tell her to hurry. We’d have to stop at the police station. I couldn’t just ignore something like that. Oh god, what if that was why he had his basement locked? Did he just kill men, or—

 “Nice clothes, little bird.”

Ben was grasping the trim over the bedroom doorway, smirking at me. I stared at his bare chest and felt my cheeks turn red at the sight of his hips bones peeking over his sweatpants.

Okay, I was out of the gate too fast. Maybe it was like body paint on a dildo? I hadn’t gotten the best look at it, and it didn’t mean he was a serial killer. He could’ve bought it offline, or had a weird hobby of casting fake penises and freezing them. But I still had to tell the cops.

I cleared my throat, shrugging. “Can’t go home in my dress. I’ll give them back.”

 “Keep ‘em. I’ve got more.” He sauntered from the door over to me and cupped my chin in one big hand. “But you’ll have to take them off for a bit while I fuck you.”

 “You know, I’m all set on sex for now,” I said. “Izzy’s coming to get me. But I’ll uh… call you.”

Ben didn’t look away as his hand drifted from my chin down to the first button of my shirt. He gave it one hard yank and tore through it to the bottom, making me gasp and jerk back. But he hooked his first two fingers in the gore of my bra to drag me back to him and towered over me.

 “No, you’re not,” he murmured.

I backed into his nightstand as Ben slipped his arms around my waist and eagerly kissed me, tightening his hold when I pushed on his chest. He tugged on my sweatpants to get them down just past my thighs and roughly shoved me face-first onto the bed. I tried to talk but he tangled his fingers in my hair to squish my face against the sheets and pulled down my panties.

He smacked my ass. “Now you’re going to be quiet while I fuck you.”

I hadn’t said no, but he didn’t give me a chance to. Still, I was nobody’s bitch. I twisted out of Ben’s grip when he went to take his dick out and wrapped myself up in the sheets, shoving a foot into his chest to stop him from coming any closer. Serial killer or not, I wasn’t having sex with him again.

Ben stood there in surprise for a minute before smiling and wrenching my foot free to start massaging it. “Impressive.”

 “Hardly. You just weren’t paying attention.”

Mercifully, my phone rang. Ben picked it up off the nightstand and checked the caller ID before handing it down to me. He went back to rubbing my foot and I sighed with relief when I saw Izzy’s name.

 “Rey?!” she gasped. “Oh my god, Rey, are you okay?!”

I glanced up to see Ben staring at me, smiling, massaging away.

 “Uh, yeah,” I said. “Are you outside?”

 “Yeah, and Rose came with me. The other girls went out for lunch so it’s just us. Who is this guy? His house looks like it should be on Camp Crystal Lake.” She paused, then, “Rosie, no!”

A car door slammed over the phone and Izzy swore under her breath and hung up. I pushed Ben away with my foot and jumped out of bed to rebutton the shirt he’d rudely ripped own. Fuck, Rose wouldn’t be afraid to ream him out. We needed to leave before—

The doorbell started ringing like crazy. Ben turned a little and laughed, then swung out of the room to allow my very overprotective friends inside. I snatched a t-shirt for him to put on and scurried after him. He’d crossed the house in a few strides and casually opened the door.

Rose busted in, all five feet of her, and got right up in Ben’s face. He kind of loomed over her like a skyscraper as she dug her finger into his chest and demanded to know his entire name and Social Security number. Izzy skirted past them with tears in her eyes and the sight of it made me all weepy, too. We hugged until neither of us could breathe anymore.

Then she stiffened and held me at arm’s length, sniffling, looking me up a down. Her eyes widened. Rose kept yelling in the background and Ben scratched his head and yawned.

 “You didn’t!” Izzy exclaimed in a garbage whisper.

 “It’s that obvious?”

Izzy squealed happily and hugged me again, this time swinging me around in the air. “My little Rey finally had sex!”

Rose’s shock was horrified instead of excited, but she abandoned shrieking at Ben to come barrage me with questions next to Izzy. I tried to keep up and glanced at Ben. Come _on_ , idiots! We have to leave!

 “I wanna go home and shower,” I interrupted after the hundredth question. “And… I have a stop to make.”

 “Planned Parenthood?” Rosie asked. She gave Ben a dirty look. “Maybe they can give your uterus a quick vacuum—just in case. Did you guys use a condom?”

 “Rey wanted it bareback.” Ben leaned on the wall and winked at me.

Izzy made a disgusted face. “We’ll stop and get you Plan B. Don’t want to breed with this thing.”

Rose suddenly snatched my arm and turned it over to see the bruises smattered on my skin. They weren’t as obvious as on white flesh, and the green kind of blended in with the brown. She practically trembled with rage and spun on her heel to attack Ben, but Izzy caught her around the waist.

 “Fuck you!” Rose shouted. “Our friend Yvonne has a dad in the Navy, and he’ll come beat the shit out of you! Sick fuck!”

Ben shrugged. “Rey told me. I was a SEAL, so I think I can take him.” He nudged the door open with his foot and nodded towards me. “Let me know if you need money for the pill or whatever.”

I didn’t say anything else. I just wanted to get out of there. Rose called Yvonne as we walked out the door and I smiled faintly at Ben as I followed her and Izzy. I’d made a huge mistake.

We piled into Poe’s Jaguar and headed down the street. My hands trembled as I Googled the nearest police station, with Rosie still yapping in my ear and Izzy demanding to know what I was thinking between apologizing for not letting me come home. I gritted my teeth.

 “Shut UP!” I screamed after another minute. I turned to face Rosie, who shrank back. “I don’t need you to fucking protect me, Rose, I’m not five!” Then I turn to Izzy, who was glancing between me and the road. “And yeah, this is your fucking fault for telling me I wasn’t welcome in your home. Now go to the address I type in your GPS and quit trying to mother me!”

They both fell silent for a while. I crossed my arms and fought back angry tears. What was I doing? Why did I lower myself to sleeping with someone like Ben? I didn’t even know his last name and I let him inside my body. I could be pregnant. I could have some horrible disease.

When we got to the police station and stopped, both Rose and Izzy contorted in their seats to wrap their arms around me. I was proud of never crying but burst like a frozen pipe after that.

 “It’s okay,” Izzy said, stroking my hair. “Rosie and I lost it to jerks, too. You can go back to the house and shower and we’ll order pizza and have a girl’s night.”

We got out of the car when I managed to pull myself together. I wiped the tears from my eyes and checked my face in Izzy’s purse mirror before we went into the police station. It was a small stone building with two cop cars outside and no one else in sight.

I wasn’t going to tell them Ben had assaulted me or anything, since I’d been more than willing last night. Still, I knew I’d been more drunk than he was. Did that count as rape?

It was quiet and warm inside. I went to talk to the clerk alone because I didn’t want to scare Izzy and Rose with the real reason I was there. They waited on a bench, sending out texts to everyone else about our plans for the night. Yvonne had already called her dad to see if Ben could get in trouble, but he couldn’t leave his assignment to come physically beat the shit out of him.

I tentatively approached the desk to see a bald male cop sitting there. He glanced up at me, frowned, and rolled his eyes. Okay. Rude.

 “Hi,” I said. “I… think I want to report a crime.”

 “What kind of crime?”

My shyness from being so emotional was wearing off. I leaned on the desk, pushing some of his papers out of the way. The cop scowled up at me.

 “I found a dismembered dick in my one-night stand’s freezer.” I smiled coldly. “So you tell me.”

He rearranged his stuff, showing no emotion. “Were you drinking alcohol last night?”

 “What does that have to do with anything?”

The police officer leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Look, little girl, you kids go get drunk at parties and see things that aren’t really there. Now I’m not going to let you ruin some nice young man’s reputation because you’re upset about the decision you made.”

 _What?_ I gawked at him in rude shock and stood up straight.

 “Are you…” I scoffed, putting a hand on my hip. “Are you fucking serious?”

 “Oregon State is nearby; we get confused girls coming in here all the time.” He opened a drawer to take out a notepad and scribbled down a phone number. “Here’s a phone number for mental health services and a website to help you with your drinking problem.”

 “You need to record this and take me seriously!”

The cop smiled up at me. “No, I don’t.”

All the times I’d researched articles for my journalism classes about rape on campuses, it seemed so distant to me. I wasn’t here to report an assault, but I was trying to report a crime, and the police officer had the audacity to blame it on me and call me a crazy alcoholic. He probably did the same thing to all the men and women who were brave enough to report crimes. What a sick fuck.

I pointed a finger in his face. “I want your badge number. I’m calling the State Police and your supervisor.”

 “Go ahead. They’ll tell you to report the crime locally, and my supervisor is very familiar with dumb college kids.”

Quivering with rage, I whirled around and stormed out of the police station. Fine. I was going for my graduate degree in journalism, and I was damn good at it. I’d find out what Ben was up to.

…Starting with his last name.


	5. The Secret of Rey & Ben

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what are these two even doing

 “Rey, you can’t go see him again.”

Girl’s night was in full swing. I was sitting in a circle on the floor, playing Monopoly with Izzy winning and Rose pissed off and snoozing next to me. Aubrey was chatting with Yvonne, who was still very interested in getting her dad to beat up Ben, and Kayla was leaning on Izzy’s shoulder. I rolled my eyes at Izzy and checked my Monopoly cash stash.

 “I have to find out what’s going on,” I said. “Wanna trade your railroad for my electric company?”

 “What do I look like, an idiot?” Izzy tapped her lips and rolled the dice. “Maybe you were just confused. He seemed like a weirdo, and they’re the type to freeze dildos.”

 “…I guess. But I saw blood.”

Kayla rolled the dice next. “Maybe it was yours from having your cherry popped. I want to buy that property, Izzy.”

I scowled. “No, I was awake and totally conscious. I lost my hymen years ago when I was horseback riding. Besides, I need to bitch him out for not using a condom.”

 “Sounds like a bad idea to me,” Yvonne said. “My dad looked him up and everything checked out. He served for almost a decade as a decorated SEAL and was honorably discharged. Doesn’t mean he’s immune to being an asshole, but he’s not breaking the law or anything.”

Izzy handed Kayla her property, rolling her eyes. “Ugh. Poe can hire a hitman, probably.”

 “It… was good.” I didn’t meet their eyes as I rolled my dice. “I liked the rough stuff, honestly. He was only a dick in the morning, trying to pressure me into fucking him again.” And I saw the dismembered dick in his freezer.

 “Those hickies better disappear before the wedding,” Izzy said, waving Monopoly money at me in a vague threat. Then she frowned and stuck out her tongue in disgust. “Really? Rough stuff?”

Yvonne nodded in agreement. “Only way to do it.”

They started squabbling and I took the opportunity to steal some money from the bank. We’d stopped at Planned Parenthood after the police station, which was not my idea of a fun day. Tests were done and I took Plan B and figured everything would be fine. I tugged my sleeves over my wrists, trying to obscure the vague bruises and hoping it wouldn’t lead Izzy and Rose to freaking out again.

Ben… Ben… Fuck, I still didn’t know his last name. It was shitty of me to spend time hunting down some random guy from the bar but I had to know what the hell was in his freezer and who exactly he was. I tapped my chin thoughtfully for a second then gasped and lunged across the board towards Yvonne.

 “Did you get his last name?!” I demanded, shaking her by her upper arms. “What’s his last name?!”

 “So…lo!” she managed as she waggled back and forth.

Ah—Ben Solo, eh? I slapped my money down in front of Yvonne and jumped to my feet to go investigate. The girls stared after me and muttered between themselves. This dick took my virginity, so he had a lot of things to answer for.

Google was useless, which shocked me. I found a profile on Facebook with no picture and flopped back on my bed, hissing in annoyance. Come on! He had to be on the grid somehow!

Best friend Izzy came into my room to tell me we were all going back out to get drunk. Rose hoped she saw the guy from last night so I was eager to go. I threw on a red dress and fluffed up my thick black hair and had a few shots before the Uber even picked us up. Everyone else was staying home. Whatever. My two best girlfriends were already have wasted and Izzy had Poe’s number to save us.

Girl’s night—what the fuck ever.

I hung outside the club from the night before to have a cigarette while Izzy and Rosie went inside. Muttering, I lit it within my palm and took a long drag. It was like undergrad all over again, getting drunk every night and stumbling home clinging to each other. Now we were all growing up and splitting up.

 “Hi, little bird.”

Oh, what the fuck. Ben was a few feet away with a cigarette and looked eerie with the light spilling over his long features, wearing jeans and a Nirvana t-shirt like a teenage boy in a garage band. I smiled sarcastically and shook my head. Thanks for ruining my first time.

He sidled closer. “Weird seeing you here. How’s Isabel?”

 “Fine.” I shrugged and dashed my cigarette. “Poe isn’t happy with… us, but it’s none of his business, I guess. How’s life?”

 “It’s been fine since I fucked you.” Ben smirked and polished off his cigarette, shrugging. “I’d like to do it again, honestly, but it’s up to you.”

Yeah, it _was_ up to me! I glared up at him and snuffed out his cigarette with my ballet flat. He was a good lay, as far as I could tell, but our relationship went beyond that. I rummaged in my clutch for another menthol and Ben gazed off into the darkness, long face sad and bored.

 “Izzy is getting married next week.” I flipped open the box of cigarettes and offered one to Ben. “Her dipshit husband just passed the BAR and she’s too pretty for him. Depressing.”

He laughed and took the offer, slipping it between his lips. “Sounds about right. Need a date?”

I wriggled my mouth. “…Maybe.”

 “I’ll go. Call me.”

Fine. Okay. I shrugged, trying to look indifferent, and noticed my mom was calling my again. Ben eyed me as I took the call and wandered from the cold wall of the club.

 “’Sup, mama?” I asked.

Mom was Darlene Kenobi now; not Darlene High Hawk. She dumped that name when dad died on the rez and she met fuckin’ Greg. They had two nasty kids. I hated all of them, except my mom.

 “Hey, baby.” Mom yawned. “How’s Oregon?”

 “Dumb.” I glanced at Ben and he smiled. “I’ll be home soon. I found a wedding date.”

 “Really? You already went to Pine Ridge?!”

Pine Ridge, where I had been born, was quite a way away. I wanted to know why and how dad died and maybe meet some other Native Americans—Lakota, specifically. Neither mattered, honestly. Exposing the bullshit of the feds would help my people, though, and I would bring the murderous asshole to justice. I knew all about the systemic destruction of Natives on reservations.

 “No… not yet,” I said. “Soon.”

 “Okay, baby. Keep me posted.”

It was quiet after I hung up. Ben glanced at me and smoked his cigarette. People drifted past us without a care and I swore I could hear Izzy laughing in the club. The moon hung high and bright overhead and I leaned over to snag Ben’s cigarette as soon as mine was burned out. He smiled and watched me take a puff. Whatever—I gave it to him in the first place.

 “So…” He ran a hand through his black hair. “You were awesome, Rey. Last night? Amazing. I could fuck you for days.”

 “Wow, you really know how to compliment a lady.”

Ben laughed and shrugged. “You’re a good fuck. How long are you here, anyway?”

 “A week.”

 “Oh. Bummer.”

I dropped my cigarette and exhaled the last plume of smoke, crushing the cherry under my heel. Ben watched club-goers wander past us and I saw a weird, deep sadness in his eyes. He had all kinds of scars raked up his arms and I felt some across his back when I was digging my nails into it. My nerves quivered at the memory.

 “What’s with the severed penis in your freezer?” I asked bluntly.

He laughed, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Oh—fuck. A prank for one of my friends.”

 “Yeah? Looked pretty real to me.”

No, Ben wouldn’t get off that easy. I raised my eyebrows, arms folded over my chest, and he kept rolling his eyes and laughing. I didn’t relent. I glared at him under the bug-infested lights while people walked past us. Maybe he was used to women giggling and shrugging things off.

He turned away from the wall towards me, maybe trying to intimidate me with his height, and I continued to stare into his green eyes without flinching. A smile wormed across his face.

 “Think what you want,” Ben said. “How about we go drink, huh? I _was_ going to bring home random club trash, but I’d much rather fuck you again, Rey.”

 “Who were you playing a prank on? Don’t you travel?”

His long fingers grasped my hips and dragged me against him and he kissed me hard. Furious, I grabbed his shoulder and gave him a sharp knee to the groin, drawing a hiss and doubling him over.

 “Fuck you,” I snapped, leaving him to rejoin my friends.

Izzy was three sheets to the wind and getting to the fourth. Rose had found her club prince charming and they were sitting together chatting and sipping alcohol. I called Poe and suggested he come support his fiancé, then sat down to eat nachos with her and drink some water. My best friend was a goon, but I loved her anyway. Hopefully she divorced Poe quick.

We danced and laughed. Izzy spun off and I was surprised when her husband-to-be caught her, smiling and relaxed. She beamed and arched on her tiptoes to kiss him and we were separated by a throng of people. I backed up to find the table and felt hands on my hips.

 “That wasn’t very nice, Rey,” Ben whispered, warm breath on my ear. He pushed me back into the crowd and snatched a drink from a passing waiter. “Drink.”

I pushed him back and downed the shot, passing the empty glass off on the next waiter. “You can’t kiss me to shut me up, Ben _Solo_.”

He grinned and tugged me to him again. “Ooo, nice detective work, little bird. Did you find my records from the Navy, too? You mentioned having a friend.”

 “Yes, I did—and yes, I do.”

Ben searched my eyes, smiling. “Good. You’re smart.”

Then I was dragged to the bar and he ordered me three Long Islands. We sat in stools and my mother hadn’t raised a quitter, so I chugged through all three while Ben watched and sipped a beer. He wasn’t drunk enough, so I made him drink a few LIITs so we were equal amounts of drunk.

I sipped a margarita, mind swimming. “Okay, so… Where are _you_ from?”

 “Denver, Colorado.” Ben laughed, expressing his dimples. “I even have two dads—Adam and Evan.”

 “No shit. Do you guys get along?”

Ben nodded eagerly. The booze was working. “Yeah, yeah; definitely. I’m crazy about them. I was a violent, shitty kid, and they were patient with me. I’d probably be dead in a ditch if it wasn’t for them. Joined the Navy, became a SEAL, and… things have been good.”

 “So you were in foster homes?”

 “Took me when I was ten. Bounced around for a long time, meeting different pieces of shit.” He polished off his first LIIT and forced a smile. “Too depressing for the bar.”

 “Is that why you cut off penises and put them in your freezer?”

He laughed and rocked back in his chair. “You’re so suspicious, little bird. Take a joke.”

We ordered random drinks and soon I realized Izzy and Rose had left the club. Ben and I were both shitfaced and that was perfect for me. We called an Uber through my app and left and made out sloppily outside while we waited. He shoved me into the wall, scraping my back against the bricks, and grinded his boner between my legs. I rolled his lower lip through my teeth and bit the side of his neck.

The Uber came. Ben pulled me along and we resumed making out in the backseat, making the driver super uncomfortable, but we were too shitty to care. I refused to straddle him so Ben tried to get on top of me, desperately thrusting into the empty space between us.

The abandoned street came and we clambered out. Ben scooped me into his arms and staggered towards the door, fumbling for his keys without dropping me. I slipped a hand into his pocket and shoved the keys into his chest and he laughed, still kissing me and struggling to unlock the door.

We spilled into the darkness. The door locked behind us and we stumbled through the house to his bedroom. I squirmed from his arms to wrestle with my dress as Ben peeled off his shirt and pants. Hot—he was fucking hot. I couldn’t reach my zipper and squealed when he hoisted me into his bed, dropping me on my back. His broad shoulders eclipsed the light.

 “I’m going to fuck you in that dress.” Ben knelt between my legs and tugged my panties off, then pushed them in my mouth. “Be quiet.”

I yanked them right back out and glowered at him. “No. Fuck you.”

Ben leaned across my body and worked his belt loose. “No? You can’t say no to me.”

Alcohol be damned, I arched my knee into his chest. He laughed and wrestled my wrists above my head with one big hand to use the other to force my leg out of the way. I buzzed with fear and slipped both knees on his wide sternum to keep his dick away from me. I wanted sex until he got all aggressive and creepy about it. He leaned back to turn me on my stomach and pressed his weight on my back.

Self-defense came in handy. I jerked my elbow back and hit Ben somewhere that drew pain, because he hissed and weakened his hold on my wrists. Furious, I whirled on my back and kicked him off the bed.

 “FUCK you!” I snarled, kneeling on the bed above his crumpled body. “I don’t fucking belong to you.”

Ben groaned, chuckling, and rolled on his back. His green eyes were lit up with excitement and he panted, searching my glare for something.

 “Fuck.” He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “You’re so fucking hot.”

 “Yeah? I can beat the shit out of you if that’ll get your dick hard.”

It was dark and lonely in the house. Ben rose, excited, and seized my wrists. He leaned down to kiss me and pushed me on the bed when I turned my face away from his. His weight was heavy and oppressive, and I strained away as he left a sloppy trail of kisses across my neck. He rocked between my legs, only in his briefs, and exerted weight on my shoulders to keep me from moving. I grunted as he reached down to push down his briefs and prodded for entrance between my legs.

Ben found a good position and pushed a few centimeters inside me with a low growl. A girly whisper I didn’t plan on slipped out of my mouth as he slowly drove deeper, stretching me to accommodate him, and he buried his nose in my neck and groaned. Wear a… fucking condom!

 “Raincoat?!” I snapped.

 “Eh?” He thrust deeper, panting. “The fuck are you talking about?”

 “A CONDOM?!”

 “…Uhh.” Ben groped behind my back to draw down my zipper and clawed it down to kiss my shoulder. “I’ll… uhh…” He licked and bit my skin and yanked me free of the dress, tossing it aside and covering us with his sheets. “Don’t you take fucking birth control?”

My eyes rolled back when Ben pushed inside me again. We were both completely naked and I felt terribly exposed and nervous. I hitched my calves on his hips and nodded—yeah, no shit I took birth control, but he could still have some nasty disease.

 “Put a condom on _right now_ ,” I demanded. Drunk as I was, I still had common sense.

Ben growled and abruptly pulled out to fish around in the nightstand. “You know, Rey, you’re lucky I love you.” He ripped a condom open with his teeth, dark eyes hungry. “I fucking hate these things.”

 “Cry about it.”

We came together again and started making all kinds of obnoxious sounds. He pulled me on top and I was more than happy to be in control, this time wrapping my long fingers around his neck. Ben smiled and rolled my hips while I squeezed his windpipe and secretly enjoyed feeling him writing beneath me. His body was riddled with scars and when I grasped his left forearm, I noticed it was cold.

He swallowed hard, smiling weakly. “Metal plate and shrapnel. Sorry.”

 “That’s… so badass.” I laughed and kept holding his arm for balance while I rocked against him.

 “Yeah.” Ben groaned, fingers tightening on my hips. “Stood too close to an explosion—didn’t seem badass at the time, but I’m getting used to it.”

I squeezed his arm and panted. “It’s cool as hell, Solo.”

Then the tension inside me splintered and broke and I gasped and wriggled as I climaxed. It buzzed to my toes and I leaned my head back, smiling and riding it out. Ben finished a few moments later, maybe because of the show I was putting on, grunting and making a few lazy thrusts as he spilled in the condom. He kissed my neck and tried to keep going but slipped out a minute later.

 “Fuck, that felt good.” Ben leaned back to snap off the condom and chuck it in the nearby garbage can. “Sleeping over?”

I was already halfway there. I waved him off and turned on my side, yawning, and passed out just as he curled up behind me.


	6. The Secret of Maine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love these two with my heart and soul
> 
> Ben has kind of an Adam sackler thing going on and I’m here for it

 “Why the hell do I have to fly out to Maine for three days? That’s a huge waste of my fucking time, Liev.” An annoyed bark of laughter. “The big rodeo is in a few more weeks. I can help you harass Kasparian then. I’m…” Ben paused and cleared his throat. “Busy.”

This time I woke up in Ben’s house feeling less like death. It even smelled like bacon which was a surefire way to get me bright-eyed and bushytailed. I blinked and sat up ramrod straight to find a plate waiting on the nightstand, full of bacon, eggs, sausage, and two slices of toast. Ben was somewhere else in the house so I ate like the pig I was, shoveling it all down and looking around his bedroom.

Wasn’t much, just old medals and some cartoon shit. Anime, whatever. I sucked my fingers clean and rummaged through his nightstand to find some dirty magazines and lube and a trove of condoms. Half of them were expired so that was comforting. I rolled my eyes and got out of bed when I was done eating to keep snooping around. We had sex twice so I was entitled to invade his privacy. Plus, I was a journalist, so… that was somehow relevant.

Ben was a big geek. I found some posters of more anime people, a box of letters that I decided not to go through, and more anime people figurines. He had two of those Walmart lightsabers under his bed and I took both out with a piece of toast in my mouth, flipping them open and spinning around a few times. Rey Kenobi, Darth… Jedi… Fucking… Luke Skywalker. I’d just list shit off ‘til something stuck.

 “Erik Kasparian is not a threat,” Ben laughed from the kitchen. “He’s just a spoiled brat whose parents never told him ‘no.’ Kill someone? No biggie, we’ll chop that up for you. Dude’s about as threatening as a neutered cat.”

I chucked the lightsabers on the bed and rolled across it to get my plate and bring it out to the kitchen. I’d put on panties and my bra but I snatched Ben’s shirt and pulled it on just to let him know I wasn’t going anywhere. Nirvana, _again._ Get out of the grunge music, dude.

He was sitting on the couch in gray sweatpants that did the thing gray sweatpants always do for guys. But he didn’t have a shirt on and I could finally see the huge, knotted scar down his forearm that must’ve been where the metal plate was inserted. He had another big scar right down his chest and was riddled with all kinds of smaller old wounds. But he was smiling and laughing along with whoever he was talking to, watching TV and catching grapes in his mouth.

Ben glanced at me when I walked to the kitchen to put my plate in the dishwasher. His black hair was pulled back in a horrendous bun, with part of it still hanging down to obscure the ears I knew he was insecure about. He gave me a shit-eating grin and went back to tossing grapes in the air and dropping most of them in his lap. I rolled my eyes and opened the freezer, suspicious. No dick.

 “Gotta go,” Ben said, watching me heading towards the bathroom. “Little bird wants to take a shower with me.”

 “Nope!” I called over my shoulder.

He pushed me through the bathroom door and giggled like a girl when I protested. Still chowing his bag of grapes, Ben shut the door behind him and leaned on it, pressing his palm to my forehead when I kept trying to get around him. He abruptly let go so I fell into his hard chest and dropped the grapes on the sink to wrap his huge arms around me and lift me from the floor.

 “Oh my god, Rey,” Ben sighed, disingenuous, “if you wanted a hug you just had to _ask_.”

I snarled like a bristling cat and tried to bite his pec but couldn’t get a good grip. He carried me into the shower and started it with a stream of icy water, making me shriek and struggle to get away.

 “What the FUCK!” I spat. “I can’t go home with wet underwear you dumb—”

 “You want to go to Maine with me?”

Oh, Jesus Christ. I craned my neck back to glare into Ben’s eyes and he grinned down at me.

 “No,” I said with as much vitriol as I could muster. “I. Do not. Want. To go. To Maine. With _you._ ”

He frowned. “Why not? All inclusive, and you can meet my… friends.”

 “No. Fuck you.”

 “…Well, if you insist.”

Ben kissed me hard and I bit his lower lip, drawing blood. He laughed into my mouth and yanked me to him by my hips as the temperature of the water finally became tolerable. I still barely knew him but even I couldn’t deny that there was something between us. I’d never felt such an instant connection with another person before and it was scary and exhilarating and bizarre and I didn’t want to let it go.

We rushed to peel off our soaked clothes and Ben supported me against the shower wall with one arm. I clung to his shoulders and wrapped my legs around his waist, then irately pulled out his ponytail. That was enough to turn anyone off. Ever.

He pushed inside me without much warning. I shivered, cold from being outside the spray and excited, as Ben spat “fuck” under his breath over and over again. He slapped a hand on the wall next to my head to steady himself and rocked deeper, almost entirely controlling my movements with his arm. It was nice. I leaned into his warmth and closed my eyes.

Then they flew open and I bit his shoulder. “PUT A FUCKING CONDOM ON!”

Ben groaned. “What difference does it make? I’m already fucking you.” He pushed as deep as he could to illustrate the point.

 “Fine.”

I kept biting Ben until he snarled and dropped me to my feet. Flipping my hair, I strutted out of the bathroom, past our pile of wet clothes, and went to his bedroom to get dressed. If he was going to give me shit for such a simple request, he could get bent.

As expected, he was right behind me. His long fingers grazed my hips as I put my dress from last night back on and I elbowed him in the ribs to send the message that he was not having sex with me. But Ben was no quitter. He knelt behind me and I stiffened when I felt his lips on the back of my thigh.

I turned enough to catch his gaze and he trailed kisses around to the front of my leg, grasping my hips with his hands to slowly rotate me to face him. I raised an eyebrow and brushed back his damp black hair.

 “I’ll call you,” I said dismissively. “Hope you have fun—”

My eyes bulged when Ben suddenly slipped his tongue between my legs. It wasn’t like I’d never been eaten out before but he didn’t seem like the type to go down on a woman. He jerked me closer and I tightened my fingers in his hair to keep from falling over. He hummed appreciatively and I had to use my other hand to brace my weight in his shoulder as his soft mouth moved in _just_ the right way.

My knees were already at the edge of the bed and gave out so I ungracefully collapsed in the mussed sheets right on top of a lightsaber. Flinching, I tossed the stupid thing away and tangled all my fingers in Ben’s hair when he dragged my butt to the edge of the mattress. I curled my legs around his head and he held my thighs, eagerly moving his tongue and using his lips like a pro. Again: surprising.

A few years of practice with different guys gave me total control over when I would finish. I’d drag it out sometimes, if I was in the mood, but usually I just wanted to get off and go to sleep. Ben knew my M.O. so he kept drawing back every time my breaths quickened or I rolled my hips too much.

I tugged his hair to make him look at me and scowled. “I know what you’re doing.”

He raised his eyebrows innocently. “Who, me?”

Okay, fine. Dumb fuck. I pushed him away by his shoulders and rolled over on my stomach to finish myself because you couldn’t depend on men to do anything right. Ben laughed and I watched his hand reach into the drawer for a condom and turned on my back to make sure he put it on. He rolled his eyes while he did and flipped me over on my stomach again, then sank inside me without another word.

Ben slipped a hand between my legs to get me to finish before he did. He wrapped my hair around his arm and I angrily pulled away until he let go.

 “Don’t touch my hair!” I hissed.

 “Okay, Jesus. Fucking lunatic.” He leaned across my back and I felt his breath on my ear. His fingers curled around my right hip. “You’re so hot.”

 “I like all of your cartoon shit.”

He hesitated, then pushed my face into the pillows. I laughed, hoping I’d thrown him off enough that he couldn’t finish. Payback for the cunnilingus that didn’t last long enough.

 “It’s anime!” he snapped like he was genuinely offended. He leaned back, distracted as he slowly rocked inside me, and took a sharp breath. “Did you touch my fucking lightsabers?!”

I burst out laughing and Ben rolled me on my back to growl into my neck and smack a line of kisses up my jaw so he could playfully bite my chin. He sank inside me again and I dug my nails into his shoulder blades, hitching my calves on his hips to bring him deeper. Ben was really fucking strong and he slipped an arm under my waist to strain my body against his when the bed kept making me slide away from him. I threaded my fingers through his hair as he buried his face in my neck and growled under his breath.

My phone was going off somewhere in the room but I didn’t really care. I made a weird squeaking noise when I climaxed and Ben immediately flipped me on my stomach to do it from behind again. He tried to prop my hips up but I kept letting them fall, now sated and sleepy. He slipped an arm under my stomach like a crowbar to keep me at the right angle and I sort of draped over it and started dozing off.

 “God you’re lazy.” Ben leaned back to grab my hips and guide me down on him and I slouched into the pillows. “Don’t fucking fall asleep, Rey; I’m not into that shit.”

 “I am _wide-ass_ awake,” I mumbled back, voice muffled by the pillows.

He pulled out and turned to lean on the headboard, dragging me into his lap. I whined petulantly as he penetrated me yet again and he seized my hips and rolled them without any effort on my part. It was deep; really deep. I flinched when I felt a sting at the back end of my vagina and wriggled in his lap when I felt it again. Ben rested his head back and groaned, Adam’s apple bobbing.

 “What the… fuck?” I muttered. I steadied myself on his pecs and tried to shift his angle.

He wrapped an arm around my back to hug me to his chest. “There. Now quit squirming.”

The pain faded away so I yawned and nuzzled under his chin while he grunted and panted and worked me up and down his dick. I put in a little effort but he didn’t last much longer. Ben groaned, clenching his jaw with a snap, and took a bunch of sharp fast breaths through his teeth. His legs writhed underneath me and he spat ‘ _fuck!_ ’ a bunch of times and made a few weak thrusts as he came.

He swallowed hard and kissed the side of my head. I made a vague sound so he knew I was alive and decided I wasn’t going to bother getting up so he could take the condom off. Sleepy. Nap time.

 “Love you,” he yawned.

 “Mmph,” I mumbled.

My phone kept fricken ringing and it was driving Ben nuts, too. He settled me down in bed and slipped out to check it, ruffling his black hair and rubbing his eyes while he snapped the condom off. I stretched out like a starfish on my stomach and he climbed over my back, knees between my thighs, and kissed my naked back. Goosebumps prickled up my arms.

 “It’s that Izzy chick,” he said. “She wants to know where you are.”

 “Tell her I’m here.” I frowned, then lifted my head and scowled at the headboard. “Hey, they ditched me last night! I could’ve died!”

Ben murmured in agreement and trailed kisses over my shoulder and down my arm. “You should come to Maine with me. Your friends suck, but you’ll be back in plenty of time for the one’s wedding.”

I took my phone when he offered it over my shoulder and his mouth traveled back up to my neck with longer, slower kisses. He rested his weight on his forearms, kind of caging me in while I furiously texted Izzy back, pissed that she dumped me yet again. Friggen bitch.

 “I have to go,” I snapped, turning on my back to push against his chest.

Ben rolled his eyes and got up to let me get out of bed and throw my dress on. He called me an Uber and kissed me on my way out the door, pulling me against him and lifting me a few inches off the ground with one arm. I reddened and said an awkward goodbye.

He grasped the top of the doorjamb with his fingertips, smiling, proud of his shirtless six pack. “Bye, little bird. Don’t fly too far.”


	7. The Clue in The Freezer

It was incredibly quiet without Ben harassing me. The next few days passed like a blur and I went out with Izzy and Rose and enjoyed myself, but kept checking my phone, hoping he’d text me. Izzy’s wedding was in a week and I’d be heading to Boston after. I mean, I could stop in California to visit my family, but that wasn’t on my priority list.

I spent the time figuring out my trip to the Pine Ridge rez and who exactly I needed to talk to about my father. Mom was vague, because she claimed she hated thinking about him, but I knew Native ties ran deep and someone would give me information. I’d find whoever killed my father.

We did some other cute wedding crap over the next few days. Izzy’s shower was nice and I got hammered at that, then we crashed Poe’s bachelor party at a strip club. I was presently surprised to see he wasn’t mad and just laughed it off with the rest of us. They kissed and she sat on his lap and told him all about her party and I saw a flicker of humanity in his eyes. Maybe he wasn’t a lizard person.

A week went by before Ben came back, two days before Izzy’s wedding. I was incredibly nauseous from anxiety and figured getting shitfaced at the bar would help, so I went with Rose. Maid of honor was a stressful spot. A couple of mixed drinks would cure me.

It was the same bar where I met Ben in the first place. We got drunk at the bar and I convinced Rose to scalp drinks off random guys with me. She was doing well for once, flirting away, but I was having a hard time. My game was off for some reason—maybe they could sense I wasn’t a virgin anymore. I got a free vodka soda and sat at a table and felt someone grab my upper arm.

 “Hey!”

It was the guy I’d pawned a rum and coke from. He was kind of attractive but loud and stupid drunk. I glared up at him and tried to pull my arm away but he held fast and jerked me out of my chair. Rose noticed from across the bar and headed towards us.

The guy yanked me closer. He reeked of beer. “I’ve watched you stealing drinks all night. You think I’m a fucking moron?”

 “I _know_ you’re a fucking moron.” I took a sip of my vodka soda and hiccupped. “I’m gonna need you to let go of my arm.”

 “Why should I?” he sneered.

Alright—fine.

I took another gulp of my drink and splashed the rest in his face. He let go to claw at his eyes and I casually turned my rings backwards before cocking back and punching him across the cheek. Didn’t want to hurt him that much; just enough to teach him a lesson. He dropped like a stone and people started turning and laughing as I shook my hand and stretched my fingers.

Rose got to me and practically ran out of the bar with me. I slowed her to a stop about a block down the street and dug in my clutch for a menthol, stumbling on the sidewalk.

 “Rey!” she hissed.

I waved her off. “He’s out cold, Rose. You got a light? I can’t find mine.”

She ripped my clutch out of my hands and glowered at me, nudging her glasses up on her nose. I blinked back at her and laughed but she wasn’t kidding around.

 “You have to stop doing this,” Rose said firmly.

 “Doing what? The guy was an asshole and I punched him. Big whoop.”

She stepped closer, heel clicking on the sidewalk. “No, Rey. You have to stop living like this. You’re going to get yourself killed sooner or later.”

 “ _Killed_?” I laughed again and swiped my clutch back. “Jesus, Rose, you’re being so serious.” I rummaged around and found my pack of Marlboros.

Rose knocked the whole pack out of my hand and kicked it down the gutter. I choked like she’d stabbed me and staggered into the street, teetering on my heels, to look down and see if they could be saved. What the hell!

She put her hands on her hips. “You could’ve died when you went home with Ben. You were lucky he wasn’t some psycho serial killer. Your behavior is getting out of control and it’s scaring me and Izzy.”

I rose to tell her off and demand she buy me another pack of cigs when I noticed a gaggle of men coming out of the bar down the street. Rose looked, too, and grabbed my wrist when they turned and looked at us. One pointed and they started walking, shrouded in darkness. There were three; too many for me to beat the shit out of. Damn. Should’ve given him a ring punch after all.

 “Fuck,” I spat. I took Rose’s hand and dragged her down the street. “We’ll find a restaurant or something to hide out in.” I dialed Izzy and held the phone up while Rose stumbled along behind me.

 “Rey…” Rose tugged my dress. “Rey, they’re getting closer.”

It was dark and cold and I was having a hard time walking in my heels. Rose wasn’t used to them and she kept tripping while we tried to rush to the nearest populated place. My ears rang as I heard the voices get louder and start calling out to us and I felt fear prickle up my spine. If something happened to Rose, I’d never forgive myself.

We both skirted around a puddle when an apartment door to the left suddenly opened. I instinctively pulled Rose behind myself, paranoid that everything was a threat, and heard a familiar laugh.

 “Fancy seeing you here, little bird.”

Ben closed the door behind him, swinging a plastic bag around his fingertip, and grinned down at Rose and I. He was wearing all black and had his black hair pulled back in a hideous man-bun. I stared at him as he descended the steps with a casual swagger and he leaned over to kiss my forehead.

 “Hey, you bitch! Stay right there!”

We looked down the street to find the group of men was almost on us. Ben scowled and handed the bag to Rose, then pointed a finger at her face.

 “Don’t open that,” he said. “Got it?”

She nodded quickly and we both stared as he walked past us towards the pissed-off strangers. I couldn’t believe it—what were the odds of me running into him there, at that exact moment?

Ben met the guys a few feet away from us and they talked for all of ten seconds before the one I hit threw a punch. Ben dodged it and the encounter turned into a brawl in the blink of an eye. All three of the men from the bar were drunk so they weren’t making any contact with Ben and he was beating the shit out of them without much effort.

Rose rustled the bag and frowned. “Eww… it’s squishy and warm.”

The fight didn’t last long. Ben had some blood on his knuckles when he came back to us and the three men were groaning and rolling around on the pavement. He swiped the bag from Rose and nodded, taking long strides that we had to jog to keep up with.

 “I got a car,” he said. “I’ll bring you two home.”

He had a car? Since when? I wanted to ask him why he was gone so long but also didn’t want to be clingy and annoying. So I silently got into his Honda Civic with Rose and noticed that it still smelled like new car. He got in the front seat and threw the bag on the floor on the passenger side. My stomach lurched and I held back vomit.

I cleared my throat. “How was Maine?”

 “Fucking awful.” He had a manual and shifted as he drove, leaning his arm on the door and shaking his head. “I have to go back in a few weeks.” He glanced at me in the rearview and winked. “I missed you, Rey. Want to come back to my place?”

 “No,” I snapped.

He laughed and peered at Rose. “Hi, Rey’s friend.”

She waved awkwardly. “Uh… hi. Thanks for helping us with those guys.” Then she scowled and looked at me. “Rey was stealing drinks and pissed one of them off.”

 “It’s not stealing,” I sniffed. “It’s scamming. There’s a difference.”

Ben rolled his eyes as he turned a corner. “I’d chase you down the street, too.”

We got back to Izzy’s place and I decided I’d spend the night with Ben since I had to help her prep for the wedding the next night. Rose told me to call her and let her know I was okay in the morning.

Ben was all over me when we got out of the car. He pushed me against the door and started kissing along my neck, then lifted me up and wrapped my legs around his waist to rock between my legs. I panted and heard him drop the bag so he could curl his hands around my thighs.

 “Don’t get blood on my dress!” I hissed.

 “I’ll buy you a new one. Quit bitching.” He groaned and his fingers slipped under my thigh and he bunched my panties to tear them off. “I missed you, Rey.”

I squirmed and prepped to bitch him out, but sighed in defeat, kissing his neck, too. “Yeah, same. Do I get new underwear with the new dress?”

Ben unzipped his pants and made a few tentative thrusts, then he growled impatiently and pushed inside me. I winced but kind of enjoyed the pain and dug my nails into his back. He shifted my weight in his arms and went back to leaving sloppy kisses all over my neck and collarbone. The wood of the door grinded on my back but I was too drunk and turned on to give a shit.

 “I’ll buy you whatever you want,” he panted.

 “Good.”

Somehow I managed to finish and my obnoxious drunken moaning brought Ben right with me. He groaned in my neck and shoved me into the door as I went slack around him, and I realized he had once again not used a condom. I clenched my jaw as he pulsed inside me and slapped the back of his head when he was finished.

 “You fuck!” I spat. “Wear a CONDOM!”

I dropped from his arms and teetered on my heels, tugging down my dress to my thighs. Ben fixed his pants as I unlocked the door and stormed inside. I struggled to unbuckle my shoes and kicked them off on my way through the living room to the bathroom. Ben laughed like the asshole he was and I slammed the door shut. Now I had to get his cum out of me before I got fucking pregnant.

He was sitting on the couch when I came out. The plastic bag was gone and I immediately went to the freezer to see if I found another dismembered dick, but it was empty.

 “Let’s go to bed, little bird.”

Ben had changed into a black t-shirt and sweatpants. He smiled when I turned around and outstretched his hand towards me. I narrowed my eyes but took his hand and followed him through the house to his bedroom.

 “Why was your trip so terrible?” I asked, sitting on the end of his bed.

He went to the dresser and tossed me a plain white shirt and basketball shorts. “My ‘friends’ are a bunch of assholes. I used to like being around them when I was younger but…” He shut the drawer and ran a hand through his hair, stiff with anger. “I’m not like them anymore.”

I unzipped my dress and it fell to the floor in a pile of silver sparkles. Okay, so his friends were assholes. Welcome to the club, buddy.

 “That sucks,” I said. I checked the t-shirt for suspicious stains and put it on along with the shorts. I looked like a goon. “But you’re still going back?”

 “Yeah, I have to. When are you flying out?”

 “Sunday. I’m going back home to California until grad school starts up in the fall. Might swing by Pine Ridge a week or two before.”

Ben nodded and got into bed beside me. “Cool. So, uh…” He laid on his side to face me and adjusted his pillows, not meeting my eyes. “I may be going to California soon, too. If you want, we can drive there together. It’ll save you a bunch of money.”

 _What?_ I blinked at him, admittedly kind of shocked. I assumed he’d be happy to have our fling over with and me heading home gave him a great excuse to break things off. Of course, he did tell me loved me a few times, but I figured he was just trying to manipulate me. He wanted to follow me to California? What was the point of that?

I shrugged. “Uh… Sure, I guess, if you’re already going out that way.”

 “Yeah, it’s not a big deal.” He wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled my back to his chest, nuzzling in my hair. “Still going to that wedding, too, right?”

 “You better be. The maid of honor needs a date.”

He murmured in agreement and yawned. We laid there for a while and I slowly dozed off, smiling at the memory of Ben punching the three men unconscious. That was probably what turned me on so much. Maybe I’d antagonize more random bar rats and watch him beat the life out of them.  I could throw a punch, yeah, but Ben was like a friggen machine.

I turned in his arms to face him and kissed his chin. “Hey.”

He didn’t open his eyes. “What?”

 “I punched one of those guys, y’know.”

Ben smiled and opened one eye. He kissed my forehead. “I know—he told me right before I started pummeling him.”

 “Yup. So don’t fuck with me.”

He laughed and dragged me closer, growling and kissing my neck while I squealed and demanded he stop. The bed creaked and the sheets shifted and it took all of ten seconds for us to start making out again. Ben clawed at my shorts but took the time to yank off my shirt and leaned back to peel his off, too. I reached up to draw my nails down his abs and for some reason I decided he was worth giving a blow job to.

I hooked my fingers over the hem of his sweatpants and had him in my mouth before I could look at it or think about it. Ben groaned and went to put his hand on the back of my head, then thought better of it and awkwardly grasped my upper arms instead. I wrapped a hand around his cock and used the other to move his to my hair and he immediately tangled his fingers through it.

When I peered up, Ben was gazing down at me with a weird, dreamy expression. I figured he’d be aggressive and gross but he was just touching my head and letting me bob my head. It made the whole thing feel way more intimate so I closed my eyes and shivered, trying to pretend he wasn’t staring at me that way. Maybe he wasn’t kidding about the love thing.

No condom, but whatever. I kept going until Ben stopped me and pushed me on my back. He made a few quick pumps with his own hand and groaned as he finished on my breasts, practically drenching me in cum. His arm weakened and he kept staring at me for a minute before he snatched my white t-shirt off the floor and wiped his hand and my chest clean.

 “I’m guessing you don’t swallow,” Ben said, raising his eyebrows. “And I don’t want you to kick the shit out of me. That guy had a black eye, you know.” He threw the t-shirt away and hooked my calves behind his neck, dragging me closer. “You made me proud, little bird.”

Then his mouth was on me and I didn’t really care about much else. I thought about what he said about ‘love at first sight’ when we first met and how we happened to stumble upon each other just when I needed help and wondered if there might be a kernel of truth to it.


	8. Ben's Mysterious Loft

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH NO at least silas has soft reasons for wanting a family -shrug-
> 
> dubcon warning

My best friend was married at three in the afternoon two days later. I stood just behind her with her bouquet in my hands wearing my green dress, hair drawn up in a braided bun. She looked beautiful in her dress and I couldn’t help but smile, even if I hated Poe.

Isabel cried during her vows, like I knew she would. When Poe got teary-eyed during his I had to fight the overpowering urge to roll my eyes and I glanced across the huge crowd until my gaze settled on Ben. He made a not-so-subtle jerking off motion and got a few dirty looks. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. He looked good in his black suit and Yvonne styled his hair so it looked like he was out of a L’Oréal ad. He cleaned up nice.

We went straight from the ceremony to the reception in the same building. The decorations were all green and brown forest shit and Mason jars and strings of white Christmas lights. I swiped a green streamer out of my way, beelining for the open bar, and a pair of familiar arms wrapped around me from behind and swept me off the floor.

I squealed and slapped Ben’s arms. “Put me down, you dick!”

He laughed and kissed my neck, setting me on a stool. “You look beautiful. So, we leaving tonight or tomorrow morning?”

 “I don’t know about _you,_ but I’m getting shitfaced tonight.” I asked the bartender for a gin and tonic and sighed. “My best friend just married the goddamn devil, so…”

 “God, you’re dramatic.” Ben nudged my arm, nursing his beer. “I found a closet upstairs where we can bang. You in?”

 “Let me get drunk first.”

The rest of the night passed by in a blur. We danced when we were thoroughly wasted, which turned into Ben and I just grinding on each other, then stumbled upstairs and found a broom closet to fuck in. He was too drunk to keep it up but we kept desperately rubbing on each other like horny monkeys until we heard voices down the hall. I kept giggling and Ben clapped a hand over my mouth, holding me up against the wall, then he started giggling, too.

 “ _Shut the fuck up,_ ” he slurred in the worst whisper I’d ever heard. He left a sloppy trail of kisses up my neck and his belt clinked. “Uh… I think I’m good now—”

 “Rey? Ben?”

We both panicked and stumbled around the closet in a hurry. The door flung open as Ben was tucking in his shirt and we leaned on each other, struggling to stay upright and act casual with our clothes all fucked up. Izzy raised an eyebrow and put her hands on her hips.

 “You two are freaking ridiculous,” she sighed. “Come on, I called you an Uber so you can go home and hump like rabbits in springtime.”

Both of us hugged Izzy and Poe a bunch of times and we started making out again when we hugged each other. Izzy groaned and yanked us apart and I screamed when I saw Rose outside and hugged her, too. It was getting dark and Ben and I were really embarrassing ourselves, but we weren’t the type of people to really care. I cried and kissed Izzy goodbye and climbed in our Uber.

Ben kept trying to get his hand down my pants and the driver kept clearing her throat all the way home. We stumbled out to his front door and Ben dropped like a hundred-dollar tip in the backseat and lifted me into his arms to carry me up the steps. He staggered a few times and almost dropped me but we managed to get in the house and make it to the bedroom.

He dropped me on the bed and I sat up to help him get out of his monkey suit. We were in too much of a rush to care about anything other than dropping it all in a pile on the floor. Ben unzipped my dress and it fell with a muffled ruffle and before I could turn around he had looped the tie through my teeth and was tying it behind my head. I bit down, surprised that I couldn’t talk.

 “I’m fucking crazy about you, y’know.” The nightstand opened and he looped another tie over my eyes, turning the room black. “I’m not just skipping the condoms because it feels like I’m fucking a tire.”

Ben lifted me up like a ragdoll and set me on my back and I felt him kneel between my legs. I squirmed, honestly kind of excited, and he restrained my wrists to the headboard with more ties. He went down on me for a few minutes and I moaned into the gag in my mouth until he crept up my body and pushed inside me. I stiffened, realizing for what felt like the hundredth time that he didn’t have a condom on, and I whimpered, too drunk to do much else. My wrists twisted in the ties.

 “Relax, little bird,” Ben murmured. He was rolling his hips slower than all the other times we had sex and kissed the edge of my jaw. “Stress makes it harder to get pregnant.”

I misheard him—I knew I had to have misheard him. His mouth drew a wet line down my neck and across my collarbone and he pushed a pillow underneath my butt, then leaned back and pulled my hips to his at an angle. I writhed in the sheets but Ben held my hips firm in his hands to keep me from moving too much. His thumbs pressed into my hip bones and I felt him twitch inside me along with hearing a short, sharp gasp, then he groaned and leaned across my body to kiss my breasts.

Ben slid a hand to my hip and went back to fucking me in a tender, intimate way that made me a little nauseous. What was his problem? I shifted underneath his weight but he just shushed me and kissed my shoulder. His breath was on my ear and I could feel his cum in me every time he rolled his hips forward.

 “I love you,” he whispered. “I can’t wait to have babies with you. They’re going to be so beautiful and smart and funny.” He was quiet for a bit, still thrusting gently, then he nuzzled into my neck and I felt moisture on my skin. “I love you so much. I’m so fucking crazy about you.”

…Ooookaaay. I figured he was fucking with me like he always did and decided to go along with it. We were both drunk, so whatever, and it wasn’t like I’d stopped taking my birth control. Weird fantasy for a guy to have but to each their own. I met Ben’s thrusts and finished with him the second time, panting and squirming as he grunted into my neck and stiffened again.

He propped himself up on his forearms and laid on top of me for a while. I was practically passed out and didn’t have the energy to bitch at him. The alcohol caught up with me and I dozed off with Ben idly kissing down my throat. I thought I felt tears, but alcohol made people emotional.

When I woke up again it was pitch black in the room. Ben’s arm was slung across my stomach and I was still fucking attached to his goddamn bed. I groggily nudged him with my knee and tried rolling over but I couldn’t see a friggen thing so I twisted my wrists in the ties as I turned on my stomach. It pulled him with me and he yawned and kissed the side of my head.

He silently crept across my back and kissed my shoulder blade, adjusting my hip on the pillow to give him a better angle. I blinked in shock when he slipped inside me without another word and curled a hand around my throat. It stung but I was so surprised that I didn’t really do anything and just sort of stared into the blindfold while Ben helped himself to my body and lightly squeezed my throat. It gave me a weird sense of pleasure but it was so… jarring. I didn’t know if I should be mad.

His fingers slithered up to my jaw and tightened and I could smell his vodka-laced breath near my ear. Did he have more alcohol after we got back?

 “You know,” Ben murmured, “I don’t think I should have to ask for permission to cum in something that belongs to me.” His other hand held my hip in place with borderline painful pressure. He gave a hard thrust and I squeaked. “I think you should be grateful when I fill you up. Don’t you?”

Okay, I was into it. Not so much the baby shit, but that all came out when he was shitfaced, so… I shook my head once and he jerked forward aggressively again and went back to choking me. It was a dizzying high relinquishing control and I was still debating if I needed to bitch him out when we were done. My head tingled and Ben grinded his teeth near my ear.

He shoved my head into the pillows, turned so I could breathe, and loomed over me. I couldn’t move. My heart pounded as he slowed down a bit and freed my wrists from the headboard. I clenched the sheets and my skin throbbed painfully where the ties had been. Jesus… what the hell got into him?

 “You’re mine,” Ben snapped, fisting my hair on the side of my head. “If I want to fill your pussy up with cum—if I want to get you pregnant—I will. Got it?”

I nodded, strangely turned on by the whole thing. Usually we there was more give and take but I sort of liked him telling me what to do and waking up to sex wasn’t _terrible._ He buried his face in my neck and went back to a punishing rhythm while I blindly groped at the side of the bed for the nightstand to get a condom. Ben seized both of my hands and pinned them next to my head.

He laughed a little. “What did I _just_ say?”

I would’ve said ‘I don’t care’ but I couldn’t talk. He slowed down for a few minutes while I rolled my eyes and kept trying to move my hands. It was half-hearted—I wasn’t panicking or anything—and Ben nosed in my hair and took deep breaths and kissed my head. He drifted down to kiss the shell of my ear.

 “I want you to try to get away from me,” he whispered. He curled a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “And scream. Can you do that?”

Er—okay? Thankfully I was still a bit drunk so I started awkwardly pushing myself away from Ben and tried worming my hands free of his. He was twice my size and I was barely moving an inch in any direction, but he still groaned like he was enjoying it and nuzzled into my hair. His fingers hooked over the tie in my mouth and tugged it out, _finally_ letting me stretch my jaw.

I panted and managed a few breathy ‘no’s’ and it seemed to egg Ben on. He squeezed my hands and moved faster while I kept doing the weird kinky shit he wanted until he finally turned me over on my back. I still couldn’t fucking see him. He kissed my neck and I pushed on his ribs, now genuinely tired enough that I wanted him to hurry up and finish. Come to think of it, I’d never seen him totally blitzed before. I was a stupid drunk, but maybe Ben was a not-so-friendly drunk.

He switched from being aggressive to eerily gentle like he had been earlier in the night and told me he loved me while I kept pretending to fight back. It was making me sick to my stomach and I pretended to finish to get the whole weird encounter over with. Ben groaned and pulsed inside me and he was done with a few lazy thrusts. We both panted and I pulled off the blindfold, swallowing hard.

Weirdly, Ben got up and left the room without another word. I slowly sat up, pushing my hair out of my face, and trembled. What the hell was wrong with him?

I got out of bed to peel off the sheets and put on a black t-shirt and a pair of his sweatpants, then wandered out in the hall to see where he went. But I could hear quiet crying sounds coming from the loft and I hesitated at the bottom of the stairs. Alright, maybe he was just an emotional drunk.

 “Ben?” I called tentatively. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t answer. I rolled my eyes and climbed them around a corner to the top. It was dark and dusty but the light was on and I could hear him sniffling to himself.

In the back by the window he was draped over an open chest freezer with his arms dipped inside. He was right about the loft being full of junk, though—there was a lot of old furniture and… cribs? I frowned as I walked towards him and noticed most of the furniture was kid-sized. Huh. Why?

 “Come on,” I sighed, gesturing and touching his hair while continuing to look around. “Jesus, Ben, what do you have, like a small town full of baby mamas?”

 “No… Hopefully just you.”

I rolled my eyes and looked down to say something rude in response and stared right past his sad green eyes into the contents of the freezer.

Penises. Severed fucking penises; like ten of them. Some were freezer burnt and they were all assorted colors and sizes and wrapped in plastic with a name scrawled on them.

My eyes widened with mixed shock and outright horror and Ben casually ran his hands through the small pile, sniffling pitifully like a kid who had been caught stealing a pack of gum. He wrapped an arm around my leg and turned to nuzzle into my stomach while I tried to close my mouth.

 “They made me this way,” he muttered, “and this is how I make them pay for it.”


	9. The Sign of the Twisted Intent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> props to whoever knows where i'm pulling the titles from

My ears rang as I continued to stare silently at the freezer full of severed dicks. Ben sighed impassively, like it was no big deal, and slowly withdrew his hand to shut the top. He turned to face me and yanked down my sweatpants to eat me out, but I pushed his forehead back and tried to break free of his arms. He scowled and yanked me back. His eyes were glassy.

 “Where are you going?” he asked in a menacing tone.

 “Nowhere.” I shook my head quickly. “Frozen penises don’t really put me in the mood, though.”

Ben huffed and went for it again, sloppily sliding his tongue through my folds. “Puts me in the mood.”

Okay—I knew self-defense, but I didn’t know if I could take on a SEAL. I held Ben’s head for a minute or two, trying to figure out the best way to go. Was he going to kill me? Jesus Christ. He always seemed so happy and carefree. I never would’ve guessed…

 “What’s with the cribs?” I panted.

Ben pulled away with a wet pop and stared up at me.

 “For the babies,” he said, like it should’ve been obvious. “Our babies.”

I laughed uncomfortably. “Ben, I’m not having kids with you. I don’t want kids at all.”

That admission made the temperature of the loft plummet. Ben narrowed his eyes and stood up, letting me readjust the sweatpants and wipe his spit off my crotch. He licked his lips and kept glaring down at me while I gave him an annoyed look in return. What the fuck was his problem?

Then I waved him off and tried to casually walk away. “Okay, well, clearly we want different things, so…” Maybe acting like it was all no big deal would work.

Ben grabbed my forearm and I went right into defense mode. I spun around to punch him in the face but he caught my fist and squeezed, slowly driving me to my knees. Yeah, I already knew he was ridiculously fucking strong, but I wasn’t going to go down without a fight. I gritted my teeth and dug my nails into the soft skin of his forearm and Ben just threw me across the room like I was a ragdoll.

I hit one of my cribs spine-first and hissed in pain. But he didn’t come at me again, just stood in the middle of the loft with his huge arms folded over his chest and glowered at me. It was a challenge—‘come and get me’—and I wasn’t dumb enough to go for it. I slowly got back to my feet, holding my injured back, and returned the icy stare. He drummed his fingers on his biceps.

 “Can’t get me pregnant if you’re going to kill me,” I snapped.

Ben raised his eyebrows and laughed, losing his threatening expression. “I’m not going to kill you, Rey. Why the hell would I do that?”

 “I’m assuming you didn’t get those dicks off eBay.”

He laughed again and shook his head. I staggered a bit and wished I brought my phone up with me. He might not kill me, but he was still a fucking lunatic. Of course. Fuck me. I kept my eyes on him while he shifted on his feet. I’d get away somehow.

Ben brushed dust off one of the cribs. “My dads adopted me when I’d already been in foster care for seven years or so. I cycled through a lot of homes because I was a pretty brutal, nasty kid, mostly because I usually ended up with a family of psychopaths. I’ve been molested so many times that I kind of lost count—but I still remember all of it.”

My heart skipped a beat. I stared at Ben while he continued to talk, inspecting cribs as he began walking around the loft. Holy shit. He was _molested?_ That was bound to make anyone violent… Maybe that was why he joined the Navy. It didn’t explain the weird baby fixation.

 “Adam and Evan were way more patient than they needed to be,” Ben said. He shrugged, pausing near the stairs. “They knew something was wrong and sent me to therapy, tried meditation; everything they could do without using pills. Then they realized that I was just violent and angry by nature, and they taught me to channel it out on people who maybe deserved it a bit more than others.”

 _Like Dexter?_ flashed through my head but I didn’t say anything.

Ben fell silent for a minute, then picked up a pink teddy bear from a nearby crib. His green eyes roamed to me and he smiled in the genuine way he usually did. I just gawked at him.

 “So I decided I’d get revenge, castration by castration.” He cocked his head and sauntered towards me while I backed up into a crib. “I don’t always kill them—I’m really just looking to separate them from their weapon. I’ll take the hands, too, sometimes, and leave them to bleed out in whatever rat hole they’re hiding in. It makes me happy.”

For the first time in my life, I was speechless. I grabbed a crib for support when Ben loomed over me with the bear and he smiled, casually invading my space without saying a word. He took my jaw in his long fingers and eyed my lips.

 “I’ve been waiting to meet someone to start my own family, too.” He stroked my lips with his thumb and I stared at him. “Most women can’t handle me but then I met you and knew I found the one. I’d like to have a few biological kids, but we’ll also adopt as many as possible, and foster them, and protect them from a system that will just end up breaking them down.”

 “I’m… I’m going to grad school,” I managed.

 “Oh, I’ll stay home with them so you can go save the world with your journalism bullshit. Then when they get older I’ll show them how to lure and castrate pedophiles, and they’ll teach their kids, and it will carry on ad infinitum until every single pedophile is fucking dead.”

My heart pounded in my throat when Ben craned his neck to kiss me chastely on the lips. Panicked, I slapped him hard across the face and he pushed his tongue to the cheek I hit, smirking. It made me angry and I tried to shove him back but he was solid as a rock. He was a real crazy person if he intended on making pedophile-hunting children with me. What the hell?

I clenched my jaw. “Well I’m on birth control so good luck with that fucking plan—and I’m calling the cops.”

 “Oh no!” Ben gasped sarcastically. “You’re really gonna call the cops?!” He slapped his forehead, rolling his eyes and groaning. “Why didn’t I think of that?!”

Then he wrapped an arm around my waist and carried me towards the stairs. I screamed and thrashed, biting his bicep, but Ben wasn’t covered in scars for no reason. He didn’t feel pain. He whistled while hopping down the stairs two at a time and threw me on his bed when we got in the room. I panted, pushing myself up, while he opened the nightstand.

Moonlight illuminated his long jaw as he rifled through condoms and picked up a handful. My spine prickled but he started idly tossing them on the bed one at a time instead of moving to attack me. I scowled, thinking he was mocking me for demanding a condom, then noticed a strange shadow on one. Trembling, I picked it up and tilted so the wrapping caught the light.

There was a myriad of tiny pinprick holes stuck through the blue wrapper. Ben continued absently tossing them while I scrambled to check the rest and found every single one had holes poked through it. I tore one open in the silence and covered my mouth in horror when I saw it was riddled with holes; holes his cum could leak through. Oh my god.

 “Just in case you wouldn’t fuck me without one,” Ben offered to my terrified expression. “Turns out you’re pretty compliant, but the few times you bitched about it, it didn’t matter. I just have to chuck the birth control and we’re all set.”

 “You FUCK!” I screamed, throwing them at his face. I got on my knees in the pile of condoms and slipped on my butt again. “I’m going to fucking KILL YOU!”

Ben laughed and got to the door before me, blocking it with his huge body. I flailed and went for his groin and he seized me around the waist, burying his face in my neck to keep me from clawing his eyes out. I stomped on his foot and he grunted, letting go just long enough for me to grab a lightsaber from under the bed. Panting, I held it over my head and Ben kept laughing.

 “The fuck is that going to do?” he asked. “Come on, Rey. They’re bad guys. And you can finish school—I’ll pay for it if you want.”

 “I’m not your property!” I retorted, quivering. “You know that’s sexual assault, right? Trying to get someone pregnant against their will? It’s assault and it’s illegal.” Then I hesitated at the last part and narrowed my eyes. “ _What?_ You want me to be your fucking brood mare?!”

 “Don’t be an idiot. We’re obviously getting married and I have a lot of money lying around.” He shrugged. “Sometimes I get paid to kill people, too. …And by sometimes, I mean I take one hit a month. …And get paid a hundred to five hundred kay per hit.”

I threw the lightsaber at his head and he deflected it. Ben started towards me and I grabbed one of his anime figurines instead to hold it out as a weapon. We locked arms, slightly evenly matched for about thirty seconds before Ben shoved me over the bed. He pinned my arms next to my head and stood between my knees to keep me from kicking him.

He panted, scowling. “Quit being such a reactionary bitch.”

 “Reac—what?! You fucking disfigure people! And you’ve been trying to get me pregnant!”

 “Big deal, it’s not like I can force you to keep it.” He suppressed another attempt to get away and glanced down at my stomach. “I _was_ going to wait until it happened and offer you the money, but I guess that’s shot to shit.”

 “You can’t pay me to carry your hellspawn, Ben!”

 “No? How much do you have out in loans?”

I glowered, imagining ways to punch him. “…Forty thousand.”

 “And that’s with aid, right? Because you’re an Indian.”

 “ _Native American_ ,” I snapped. “And yes.”

Ben suddenly let me go and walked around the room to his desk while I hurriedly scrambled out of the bed and grabbed the other lightsaber. He opened a drawer, running a hand through his hair, and took out his cell phone. I watched him scroll through it and the toy shook in my hands, rattling the plastic. He was fucking bonkers. I knew I was right when I saw the penis in the freezer the first time.

I swallowed hard. “When you said you choke women who fight back—did you mean…?”

 “Rape isn’t really my thing,” he said offhandedly. “I mean, it is, but I promised Adam and Evan that I wouldn’t do it. I was just testing your limits. Here, look at this.”

He ambled over like the current situation wasn’t unfolding and ripped the lightsaber away from me when I waved it at him. I tried to kick him, drawing an annoyed sigh and driving Ben to put me in an actual headlock. We sat on the bed and I spluttered and clawed at his arm and he showed me the screen, still cool as a cucumber. Motherfucker.

It was an article about some kiddie diddler who was found bled out in his apartment. Wow, great, now he was showing me his kills. Awesome. But Ben kept scrolling and the article detailed how many kids the guy had gotten his hands on and a vague idea of what he did to them. I blinked as he went to the next and the next, quietly reading and ceasing my struggle.

One guy kept kids captive in his basement and got them pregnant, then had kids with his own kids. He was found dead in his apartment, san genitalia. Another one killed kids and refused to divulge where he left their bodies. He was found dead in his mother’s basement, next to a list of where the bodies could be exhumed, sans genitalia. Some were found before their hearings could begin, and some where found after serving time, and some were found without anyone having known what they were.

Ben let me go and shrugged, setting the phone aside. “My parents made it clear that they wouldn’t protect me if I hurt innocent people. I owe them my life—literally, I’d be dead in a ditch by now—so I figured ‘why the hell not?’ Protects kids, makes me feel better, and the police tend to misplace the paperwork when these assholes die.”

 “I mean…” I hesitated and rubbed my neck, then flashed with anger again. “You still tried to get me pregnant, you freak! Poking holes in the condoms like a crazy ex-girlfriend!”

 “Big whoop; you’re on birth control, anyway.” He rose from the bed and put on gray sweatpants without looking at me. “It’s up to you. I’m not going to hold you captive or anything. Again, I’d _like_ to, but I swear my parents have a sixth fucking sense.”

I gawked after him when he left the bedroom and scrambled to my feet to follow.

 “I’m telling the police!” I insisted.

 “Go ahead. All the molested kids in the world will thank you, I’m sure.”

We went to the kitchen and Ben grabbed a bottle of vodka from the first time I came over and leaned on the counter to swig from it. I brushed my hair back and chewed my nails. Okay, killing pedophiles maybe wasn’t the worst thing ever. I was being sanctimonious about that.

I took the bottle and drank from it, too, and Ben smirked. I really needed a friggen drink.

 “Grad school is a hundred thousand,” I said after a pause.

 “Yup.” He scratched his jaw, eyeing me. “Knowing you, you’re not stopping until you have your doctorate.”

 “…Yeah.”

He gestured vaguely to the house. “Obviously I don’t keep it in the bank—the money is with a friend, Felix Weiss, who can keep it hidden. I’m going to see him in a few weeks and I can have him bring what you need. A hundred fifty kay should do it.”

My heart pounded. I drank more, desperate to lose my common sense. My loans were going to weigh me down for a long, long time. I’d already talked to Rose about living together after college and current projections tapped me for paying until I was in my fifties. It’d be a big chunk of my income… and journalism wasn’t exactly lucrative.

Ben took the bottle when I offered it to him and I hopped on the counter beside him, thinking deeply. Maybe I could meet his dads and decide after that.

 “I don’t have to stay home?” I asked, changing course.

He shook his head, wincing at the burn of alcohol. “No. You’re about as maternal as a brick. I’ll stay with them and you just watch them when I go for a job. You can do whatever you want otherwise. Write for CNN, have a mommy blog, make yourself famous on Tumblr. I don’t care. But you have to marry me and see the kid like once a week at least.”

 “Why?”

 “Because I love you, dummy.”

I rolled my eyes and snatched the vodka back. Yeah, right. He was just a freak. But it did kind of warm my icy, black heart to hear him say that.

My head prickled from the alcohol. I licked my lips and felt Ben’s gaze on me. He knew it was a tempting offer, but it meant I was throwing my life away in a different direction. I’d be married, have a kid. No debt, which was nice… And Ben was the only guy I’d ever met who was remotely worth my attention.

 “Y’know in kindergarten when they ask you what you want to be when you grow up? Everyone says firefighter or doctor or cop.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You said ‘hit man’?”

Ben laughed and meandered over to stand between my knees, hands on either side of my hips on the counter. He leaned in to nuzzle under my chin and I huffed and wrapped my arms around him.

 “I just wanted to be a dad,” he said. “Don’t know why—probably because I figured I could do a better job than the ones I’d met up to that point. It’s still really all I want. The Navy helped me get out a lot of my aggression and I learned a lot from my parents about how to be a man in a less toxic way, and I think all of it, even what I went through when I was a kid, was just preparing me for fatherhood. Or I just have a cursed, shitty life. Either one fits the bill, really.”

He took his phone out again and offered it to me. “You can call Adam and Evan if you want. They’re both way more than I deserve, but they know about you, and you can ask them whatever you want. Or you can leave in the morning and we’ll never see each other again.” He stepped back and gave me a shit-eating grin. “I’ll stalk you, though. Sorry.”

Ben kissed my forehead and left the kitchen with a loud yawn. I sat there in the darkness for a long time, staring at his phone, thinking of calling 911. But my trembling thumb scrolled down to ‘Dad 1 – Blonde Bitch’ and ‘Dad 2 – Brunette Bitch’ and I smiled a bit at Ben’s weirdness. Maybe I could call—just to check his story. He wasn’t trying to kill me or anything.

I took a deep breath and hit ‘call’—to Blonde Bitch.


	10. The Password to Ben's Baby Daddy Dream Journal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i have to catch this up with 'something wicked' before i can update SW again eeeek

It took one ring for Ben’s blonde dad to answer the phone.

 “Hi, Benji,” he said offhandedly. “How was the wedding? I figured you’d be asleep by now.”

Benji? I had to remember to bully the shit out of him for that nickname later. But I cleared my throat awkwardly and rubbed the back of my head.

 “This is Rey,” I said, starting to pace in the dark kitchen. “Uh… Ben told me to call you?”

Blonde dad was silent, then gasped. I heard his phone make a rustling sound and a loud clatter followed by ‘dammit!’ before he was gasping again in my ear. He spluttered a few times and hissed to someone else—‘Evan, _get over here!_ ’—and I heard two men whispering to each other. One was with a deeper voice cleared his throat and spoke.

 “Hi, Rey,” he said. “I’m Evan and—”

 “I’m Adam!” interrupted the one who picked up the call. He took on the same singsong voice my mom used when she was on the phone.

I laughed a little. “I sort of thought he was lying about you two.”

 “Same here,” Adam said, laughing, too. “He sent us a picture of you, but I figured he just followed a random girl around in the bar.” He paused, then added hastily: “Not that he does that… often!”

 “You just look like you’re way out of his league,” Evan added.

My conceited nature came out, thankfully sounding like a joke. “Oh, I _know_ I’m way out of his league.”

All of us laughed and it drew Ben back into the kitchen. He still didn’t have a shirt on and plucked the phone from my fingers to put it on speaker. I swiped the vodka when he went for it again and turned in circles to keep him from taking it away while his parents chatted away.

 “So, you’re from South Dakota, Rey?” Evan asked. His voice was deep like Ben’s.

Ben snagged me around the waist and tried worming his lips over the bottle while I was drinking from it, which just made it spill down my chin. He licked at it and I nodded and tried pushing him away.

 “Yeah,” I managed, “I was born on a reservation. My mom lives in California with her husband now, though. Ben said you two live in Colorado?”

 “Okay, the bullshitting can wait until we visit,” Ben interrupted. “I told Rey everything, like I said I would, so if you two can confirm it for her, that’d be great. We’ll swing through in…” He tapped the phone screen, wrestling to keep me pinned in his arms. “Three, four days? Then we’re heading straight through to Maine.”

 “Don’t take her there!” Adam snapped. “Are you nuts?!”

 “No, but Pierre is fucking nuts!” Ben spat back.

They started bickering, but Evan interjected in his deep voice and the arguing stopped. I turned my head to look up at Ben and he shrugged, then quickly dipped his lips to the vodka and forced my arms to tilt it back. I rolled my eyes and ripped it away, nearly throwing it into the wall in the process. Motherfucker!

Evan sighed. “Yes, it’s unfortunately all true, Rey. We adopted Ben when he was ten and quickly found out that he had some… proclivities… that weren’t going anywhere. He knows what he should and shouldn’t do, so if he decides to stray, we’ve made it clear that we won’t protect him.”

 “We’d like you to call us once a week if you don’t mind, Rey,” Adam said. “Just so we know you’re safe. Benji is like a toddler—if he’s quiet too long, you know he’s doing something bad.”

Ben rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers. “Yeah, whatever; tell her about the pedos and the abuse and shit, too.”

 “They don’t have to detail that for me,” I said, shaking my head spastically. “I believe you. As long as you’re not hurting innocent people or tricking them into getting pregnant like you did to m—”

He covered my mouth with both hands but it was too late. One of his parents took a sharp, angry breath and I heard Evan calling for Adam to stop. Ben swore and hung up the phone and dragged me out of the kitchen and down the hall to the bedroom. He didn’t seem like he knew what to do with me and pushed me on the bed, then rushed to his closet and grabbed a black duffel bag.

I threw my hands up in the air. “What’s your fucking problem?!”

 “What do you think?!” Ben hissed. “Didn’t you fucking hear him?! If I deviate, they call the police! They usually just report the address but we still need to get the hell out of here before they show up.” He threw a small red cooler at me. “Can you—”

 “NO!” I shrieked, throwing it right back. “You go get your _own_ murder trophies, Buffalo Bill!”

Ben groaned and ordered me to start ‘putting clothes and shit’ in the black duffel bag. I watched him race out of the room and for some reason, maybe the adrenaline, I went to his dresser and filled the bag with as many odds and ends as I could. I noticed a wad of cash in the bottom but didn’t want to inspect it. I grabbed my bridesmaid dress, bra, and panties and chucked them in, too.

He came back with the cooler and I watched incredulously as he put the lightsabers in the duffel bag, too. At the last second he pulled on a gray t-shirt and took my hand to lead me through the house, checking every door to make sure it was locked. I snatched my clutch on our way out and there was an Uber waiting for us that Ben hurriedly shoved me into.

I slapped his arm, pissed off. The driver looked nervous but pulled away from the curb while Ben tried to push the cooler off on me. I kept throwing it back until he growled and squeezed the back of my neck, which just got him a slap across the face. Our… banter just unsettled the driver even more.

 “Where’s my phone?!” I demanded.

Ben offered it to me, then kept it just out of my reach, laughing, until I bit his forearm. He leaned forward to give the driver an address while I began texting Izzy, but hesitated. She was on her way to her honeymoon—I didn’t want to bug her about my clothes and crap. I moaned and leaned my head back. Everyone else was gone, though! Fuck me.

 “My clothes are at Percy’s house,” I whined when Ben sat back.

 “Bee eff dee, I’ll buy you more.” He took a deep breath, running his hands through his black hair. “Adam doesn’t screw around. He’s called on me a few times and I’ve been caught once or twice. Just for dumb shit, like weed, hence the dramatic gasping. Thanks for ratting me out, little bird.”

 “Thanks for trying to _impregnate_ _me_!” I retorted.

We arrived at a Hilton hotel and somehow made it up to our room without drunkenly falling on our faces. Neither of us could drive and Ben said he didn’t ‘give a shit’ about his car and wanted to buy an RV instead. I was too exhausted by the entire insane day to give a shit about anything else.

Cops raced past outside, sirens wailing and lights flashing. I blinked after them in surprise and turned to see Ben giving me an ‘I told you so’ look. Jesus. Well, good for his parents.

 “So… Are they going to tell the police everything?” I asked.

 “Nah. They just call and let the chips fall where they may. I keep my property under my friend Felix’s name, so he usually just apologizes and says it must’ve been a prank call. But if it’s bad enough he’ll give them my name and tell them where to find me.”

I frowned. “…Why?”

 “Both of us aren’t allowed to hurt innocent people. We’re supposed to keep each other in check.” Ben scowled, stalking past me to the bedroom. “He better not have reported it as a fucking rape because the cops won’t give up on that.”

The room was nice, at least. The walls were beige and the carpet was slightly darker beige. Beige furniture. Oh—the kitchen? Beige granite. At least the appliances were stainless steel.

Our bedroom had some red accents, thank god. I sat down on the huge bed to watch Ben rifle through his duffel bag for the wad of cash, rolled into a thick bundle of hundreds, and finger through it before stashing it under his clothes. He looked strangely intense (well, more so than usual) and I idly let my thoughts drift to how much more intense he would be with me pregnant.

About a hundred times worse, probably. Controlling. Annoying.

He left to fill up his dick cooler with ice and I turned on the TV, lounging around, oddly at ease with the situation. I felt better after my brief talk with his parents and was very impressed with Adam’s immediate call to the police. They didn’t let Ben hurt people who didn’t deserve it. People who molested children deserved to have their genitalia cut off and to be left to bleed to death.

Plus, now that Adam and Evan knew about Ben trying to con me into getting pregnant, he wouldn’t be trying _that_ again. I slouched in the pillows and smirked. Good—I was back on top.

Ben came back and chucked the cooler into the corner of the room. He flicked off the lights and crept into bed with me, collapsing on his stomach with a long, pained groan. I reached over to run my fingers through his hair and kept watching _Forensic Files._ Both of us were silent for a while.

 “I’m sorry.”

I glanced at Ben’s face half-buried in pillows. “For what?”

 “You know for what.”

 “That’s a garbage apology.”

He heaved a sigh and mumbled ‘for trying to trick you into getting pregnant’ and I was happy enough with that. It didn’t feel like he was a pressing danger anymore, but I couldn’t forget the way he acted when revealing the penis freezer. Exactly what would push his buttons and how far would things go before he retaliated?

Casually dropping the defective condoms on the bed had been borderline sadistic. I hadn’t looked at him when I saw the holes through the wrappers, but I had a feeling he’d been smiling. Could I really take comfort in his parents assuring me that they’d step in if he crossed the line?

Ben rolled over, wrapping a long arm around me and laying his head on my stomach. I kept gently detangling knots in his hair, trying to decide how much of a dipshit I was on a scale of one to ten. It had to be a hard fifty. I could get money for school, though, and I was kind of crazy about him, too. At least it would make an interesting story for my master’s thesis.

 “Want to see something?” Ben asked suddenly.

 “…Maybe?”

He leaned forward to drag the duffel bag over and unzipped it, rummaging again. I yawned and sat up with my chin in my hand to sleepily watch. First we needed to go to Victoria’s Secret so I could get new lady garments—did my employee discount still work?—then I needed something that didn’t smell like cologne. Ben looked more excited than I’d ever seen when he took out a small black notebook with a bunch of neon page markers sticking out of it.

 “Murder diary?” I asked dryly.

 “Ha ha. Hilarious.” Ben cast me a dirty look and opened to the middle of it, shifting next to me to drape the book on both of our knees. “So—you know, I’ve been waiting forever to find someone to have kids with, and I have a lot of free time between jobs, and… I did this.”

I pressed down with my fingertips to read the page better and blinked in surprise. Uh…

 “…Baby food recipes?” I said, maybe in a bitchy tone. “Seriously?”

He shrugged, flipping to the next page. There were pictures that weren’t half bad that Ben must’ve drawn himself and all kinds of scribbles and rewrites. It was vaguely disconcerting, and I was torn between mocking him for acting like a middle-class white suburban soccer mom and being nice to him for once. Decisions, decisions. He was sensitive about the baby shit, though.

 “Our kid isn’t eating that shit you buy in the grocery store,” he said. “All those preservatives and colors and crap are poison. No fucking formula, either. It’s garbage.”

 “I was formula-fed and I’m not the one going around murdering people.”

 “Still garbage. That’s why you have tits, Rey.”

I rolled my eyes. “Doesn’t mean I have to let some smelly-ass baby suck on them.” Then I shuddered and pushed the book away. “Okay, I’m exhausted; I’m not getting into this tonight. Put your baby daddy dream journal away.”

Ben made a face like a kicked puppy. “…Alright, get some sleep. I’ll be up for a while.”

He left the room without another word and shut the door behind him. I sat there for a second, torn between feeling guilty for being rude about his bizarre dreams, and feeling like he was kind of shoveling a lot of me at once and should expect me to balk. Then I turned over on my side and passed out, and worrying about Ben didn’t matter anymore.


	11. The Clue of the RV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: dubcon-ish

We picked up a big, fancy RV the next day. I stood beside Ben with my shades on, snapping my gum, dressed in his sweatpants and t-shirt. I still looked hot. He signed the paperwork then we headed out on the road to SoCal first to see my mom and her demon children. I lounged in the living room area with my phone while he drove and spent the day bitching about my half-brothers.

Along the way we stopped at a mall so I could get some real clothes. Ben bitched the whole time but became interested when I was picking out panties and bras. He chucked cash at me when the time came to pay and the cashier made eyes at him. I leaned in her view and smiled tightly. Back off, bitch.

We arrived at mom’s uggo McMansion within a day. Ben laughed when we pulled up to their literal white house with blue shutters and a white picket fence. It didn’t fit in the dusty landscape and I groaned when Cory and Zeke came flying out the front door to hug me. Pains in the ass.

They both had mom’s tan skin and dark hair but Greg’s blue eyes. I wriggled when they hugged me, repulsed by the two thirteen-year-olds, and they gravitated towards Ben. He scooped them up in his arms and swung them around and they shrieked with laughter. Mom and Greg emerged next and mom cried well before he got to me and hugged me.

 “Rey!” she sobbed. “I missed you!”

Mom was shorter than me and kind of chunky. Dad apparently had my lanky body. I gave Greg an awkward hug and they moved on to harass Ben. He hugged both of them and mom squeezed his cheeks.

 “Aren’t you adorable?!” mom crowed. “I hope Rey hasn’t been too difficult.”

 “Just difficult enough,” Ben replied, and everyone laughed.

The AC was on and the house was nice and cool. Mom had a ton of stuff from the rez scattered as décor. Ben slipped out of his shoes and slid across the hardwood floors to the kitchen, where mom had a platter of cheese and crudités out for snacking. I helped myself and Ben sat next to me.

We spent the day chatting with mom and Greg until we went swimming later on. I dragged Ben into the pool when everyone was asleep and we made out and humped each other. He pulled me up to my childhood bedroom, still with horse sheets, and shoved me down to fuck me just past my bikini. I clung to his back and we laughed every time the bed creaked.

Ben kissed my chlorine-coated skin. “I want to cum in you, Rey.”

 “…Okay.”

 “I can?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, whatever.”

He thrusted faster, clearly happy, and I clung to him and moaned as quietly as possible. Ben grunted and rocked inside me and panted in my ear.

 “You’ll have my babies?” he whispered.

I didn’t reply. I shrugged instead and Ben didn’t push the issue. I came, he came, and we fell asleep in my childhood bed beside each other. Cum pooled between my thighs.

We got up in the morning and brought my brothers to the park to hang out with their weird little friends. The weird friends kept staring at me and Ben kissed along my jaw like he had to prove to some teenage boys that I was off the table. I smiled anyway and kissed him back.

The week passed by quietly. Mom asked about Izzy and I shrugged and said I still hated Percy. She loved Ben. She dragged him to the garden to help her and he didn’t complain. At night we would sleep in my room together and he would ask me if I wanted to have his babies. I’d shrug, noncommittal, and moan when I felt him cum inside me. He’d make me lie down for fifteen minutes before letting me up.

We left for Colorado. Mom and Greg wished me luck in school and Cory and Zeke clung to Ben until we got to the RV. He ruffled their hair and I smiled. Damn, he even liked teenage boys. They were the worst.

I laughed during our drive when we stopped in Nevada. Ben was on top of me, lips hungry and warm on my neck, and he drew back to frown. This crazy, violent psychopath genuinely loved kids. That had to be at least a bit funny.

 “What?” he mumbled.

 “Nothing. I think I love you.”

Ben grinned and kept going. He waited until I pulsed around his cock before spilling inside me with a loud, dramatic groan. So much unprotected sex. I hadn’t outright agreed to his proposal but I did in my own head. I’d agree when the pregnancy test came back positive.

We arrived outside some cabin with two stories and a garden outside. This time, Ben’s parents emerged with a flourish and Adam, the shorter blonde, raced towards his son. I smirked and shook Evan’s hand, the taller one with dark hair, and we watched Adam arch on his tiptoes to kiss along Ben’s face. He apologized to his son and turned to me.

 “Rey!” he crowed. “You’re real!”

I laughed and hugged Adam. Evan spoke quietly to Ben while Adam smoothed down my hair and checked me for bruises or cuts. All good. Your kid just wants me pregnant—no big deal.

They had three German shepherds, who all came out to bark and lick us. I laid down on the hardwood in their foyer to let them lick my face—Loki, Thor, and Odin—and hugged them whenever they came close. Ben gently feigned annoyance at Adam for calling the police.

 “You can’t trick her into motherhood,” Adam said tersely.

 “True.” Evan glanced at me and smiled. “I’m happy, Ben. I hope you two are happy.”

We all went outside with wine and I ended up running around with the dogs. Ben joined me, scooping up Odin in his arms and laughing while the dog licked his jaw. I didn’t like kids, but I sure loved dogs. I shrieked and fled from Loki and Thor and they barked happily and gave chase. Evan waved languidly to us when we collapsed in a pile with the dogs, laughing and pretending to protect each other.

That night we had sex in Ben’s childhood bed. It was bigger than mine and he had all sorts of anime bullshit on the walls. He pulled me on top of him and gazed into my eyes until I squirmed and whimpered into a satisfying orgasm. Then he rolled on me and thrusted until I made the same sound from before. He liked being on top and that was fine with me.

 “Good girl,” Ben crooned. “Let me fill you up.”

I sighed. “Tell me more about our baby.”

Everything stopped. Ben was silent, breathing lightly, then swallowed and rocked deeper inside me.

 “…She’ll have your hair,” he whispered. “And my green eyes. I hope she has your bitchy personality.”

 “Charming.”

 “No… I want her to. I want her to be no-nonsense and never let anyone tell her what to do.” Ben slowed his movements inside me, groaning. “I hope she’s strong and brave like you, Rey. But I want her to need me, too… I’ll help her whenever she needs it.”

A girl, then? I tensed underneath him and swallowed.

 “You want a girl?” I asked quietly.

 “Of course I do. I can teach her how to fish and hunt and still let her wear pink dresses at the end of the day. Girls are the best.”

I dug my nails in Ben’s back. “Come in me. Get me pregnant.”

We tried to stay quiet, but he had a deep, guttural groan when he came. He kissed along my face and remained inside me for a few minutes before thrusting again. My Ben.

Agh. It went against all my pro-Rey bullshit. I woke in the morning and slipped out of bed to shower and blinked when Ben stepped inside, too. He grinned and fucked me against the wall before helping me wash my hair and body. I trembled. It was wrong, but I wanted it to much.

Evan made breakfast and all of us went for a walk. Ben held my hand and laughed along with his dads and I wished I could pretend it was normal. But Ben killed people.

On day four, Ben got a call.

 “Solo,” he said stiffly. It was four PM.

I yawned and flipped through my magazine. Ben stiffened, nodding and hung up. He rose from his chair and paced and shook his head.

 “What’s up?” I asked lazily.

He ran a hand through his hair. “My friend Felix needs my help. We have to leave for Maine.”

I snapped my gum. “Does this have to do with Pierre? Who is he?”

 “…Pierre Holt. The serial killer.”

My stomach flipped. I’d read the articles. Pierre was a nasty person. Ben admitted that he knew Liev Gunter, a much more prolific killer, and I shifted nervously.

Ben explained that Felix knew two women were being wrangled up for their keepers. Felix had warned one, Genevieve, but the other hadn’t been as lucky. He seemed mad and paced the bedroom and I put down my magazine to listen. I trusted him.

 “They’re in Maine?” I asked when he was done.

Ben nodded, scowling. “Yeah. All of them.” He drew a stiff hand through his hair. “Liev’s kid, Viktor, is there, too. Penelope wants me to take care of him.”

 “Why?’

 “…He likes kids.”

Oh, gross. I gagged and Ben nodded, getting angrier, then calmed a bit when I rose from the bed to touch his chest. He huffed and nuzzled under my chin and I hugged him tight.

 “I’ll cut his dick off for you,” I murmured, and both of us laughed.

Adam and Evan weren’t super happy when we left. I promised to call in a few days and Adam hissed warnings in Ben’s ear. We got in the RV and went back to me lounging and Ben driving. By nightfall, we were a few states over, and laid in bed together.

Ben peeled off his shirt and sighed. “I’m sorry, Rey. At least when we see Felix he can give you the cash.”

I drew Ben’s warm body closer and realized I didn’t give a shit about the money. Part of me hoped I was already pregnant.

 “It’s fine,” I muttered.

He rolled me on my belly and sank inside me when I was dripping wet and ready. I moaned into the pillows, no longer suppressing my voice, and Ben held my hips and rocked deeper. He reached between my thighs to stroke my clit until I came with loud wails, bucking into him. He loomed over me and took his time with getting hard and spilling in my pussy.

Ben had strong, unmovable hands. “…Rey.”

I moaned to let him know I was still conscious. He laughed and leaned over to kiss my tangled black hair. I knew he wanted me to be his baby mama, essentially, but I still felt so deeply loved.

He tightened his grip. “I… I…”

 “Come in me,” I whispered. “Please. I want it. I want your babies.”

 “Say you don’t.”

The kink turned on its head. I swallowed, reeling, and shook my head.

 “…Please don’t.” My throat stung. “Please don’t cum in me.”

Ben dug his fingers in my hips and dragged me on his cock. My mind spun and I whimpered and pretended to try escaping. He liked this shit. So did I. I wanted him to overpower me. Men were always so gentle and pliant when they tried to get in my pants—I wanted Ben to show me he owned me.

He grunted. “You’re mine. I’ll breed you.”

I lit up excitedly and moaned. “No, no! Please don’t!”

His fingertips pressed hard divots on my hips and ass and he snapped about how I couldn’t get away. I wailed and smiled into the pillows while Ben growled and slapped my ass. His breath caught and he groaned, breathing hard, and held my hips to grind deep inside me. I stayed quiet and listened to his masculine grunting as he thrust my body the exact way he needed to fill me up with cum.

Ben swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, Rey. That was fucked up.”

My pulse pattered as I turned over in our bed and smiled up at his genuinely distressed look. He smiled back, weakly, and stroked my cheek. Cum dripped on my thighs.

 “I don’t care,” I said. “It was fucking hot.” Then I drew my fingers through his hair and bit my lower lip. “Rape me, Ben.”

His green eyes brightened and he went to work. I feigned resistance and screaming and bit my lip until it bled while he called me a whore and fucked me over the edge of the bed. Love at first sight, maybe. Soulmates? That was a definite.


	12. The Message in the Bathroom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY I'M BACK

 “Hey, little bird. Wake up.”

My eyes fluttered open to find Ben standing next to our bed, zipping up his jeans. Groggy from another night of sex, I could only grunt in response and bury my face back in the pillows. He laughed and took a few steps away from me to put on his watch.

 “Don’t you want to see the guy I’m going to kill?”

I blinked and raised my head. “…Excuse me?”

Ben beckoned me and walked towards the front of the RV. I huffed and lazily rolled out of bed, only wearing one of his black t-shirts, to pad after him. He stretched his arms as I approached and I saw the hilt of a huge dagger hidden in the back hem of his jeans. Holy shit.

Then he leaned over the passenger seat, smiling and pointing at someone out the window. “Look at him. Doesn’t he have a face you just want to beat to a pulp?”

I grasped his muscular forearm and leaned over to look out the window.

We were parked near a playground, which was probably not the best place for a huge RV, and there was a bald white guy sitting on a bench by himself. He had traditional pedophile thick-rimmed glasses on and was smiling at the kids while they played. He looked around his mid-40s.

 “Just because he _looks_ like a kiddie diddler doesn’t mean he is,” I said, eyeing his white sneakers.

 “Name is George Paulson.” Ben scratched his chin, glaring at the target. “Out on probation after making six-year-old boys ‘sit in his lap,’ which is code for humping their butts.” He drew back and kissed the top of my head. “I like killing them when they think they’re home free. Quick scan of the online registries gives me a good selection.”

George had a bag of candy next to him. It was like watching a PSA about pedophiles.

I followed Ben to the bedroom and dressed in a gray t-shirt and jeans. He kept staring out the windows at George while I brushed my teeth and washed my face and put on makeup. Ben looked intense, pacing like a hungry tiger in a cage, and took out his knife to twirl it in his grasp. I touched his arm and he calmed down for a few minutes.

 “Look at him!” Ben spat. “Motherfucker—I’ll fuck him up!”

 “Relax. He’s not going anywhere.” I cupped Ben’s face in my hands and raised my eyebrows. “If you get caught, I’m up shit creek without a paddle. Calm down and take a deep breath.”

He stared down at me, taking sharp breaths, then nodded and clenched his jaw. I arched on my tiptoes to kiss his lips when he’d gotten back to baseline and Ben wrapped me in a tight hug. He buried his face in my hair and I found myself comforting a man for the first time ever. I ran my nails across his back and murmured in a low, gentle voice, and Ben gradually calmed down.

He leaned on me and I felt the weight of a world I couldn’t support.

We waited until it was getting dark. Ben beckoned me from the RV and we headed out into the cool night to confront George while he gathered his kid-luring snacks.

George glanced up and smiled. “Hello there.”

My spine prickled. Ben smiled back and offered me up as a sacrifice, lying and saying I was fifteen, and George wrung his skinny, gnarled hands. I hated the way he was looking at me, but I wanted to help Ben exact his revenge. I tried my best to smile on our way back to George’s apartment when he touched me.

It was dark and eerie, just like I thought. George led us inside and up to the third floor, past cracked paint and faded wallpaper, and I clung to Ben’s arm. Ick.

We went in apartment 203. I shoved past George when he tried to touch me again and Ben slammed the door shut and slapped the pedophile upside the head. The apartment had old furniture and stained walls but I wandered around to see if he had anything of value. Why not? He’d be dead soon.

 “B-But…” George stammered.

Ben pistol-whipped him—literally—and circled George when he collapsed on the floor. I sat on the arm of the couch to watch with my arms crossed.

 “You like molesting kids?” Ben hissed. “You think you’ll fucking get away with it?”

 “I—I served my time!”

Ben stomped on George’s head until he screamed. It looked like it hurt, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I watched Ben shout at the pedophile under his foot until he knelt and wrestled George’s pants off. His dick wasn’t that great, but it was half-hard and mottled pink and white. I raised my eyebrows and studied Ben’s facial expression.

I slipped off the arm of the couch. “Can I like make some popcorn?”

 “Sure, little bird.” Ben was punching George in the face, bloodying his knuckles. “We have some in the RV, though.”

 “Meh. I’m hungry now.”

Watching Ben kill a man wasn’t as hard as I thought. I peeked out from the kitchen while my popcorn bag inflated and winced when George screamed, but still watched the rest.

Ben seized his dick and stretched it out, then sliced it off without another word. George vomited on the carpet from pain and Ben moved on to sawing off his testicles, too. It was all a gory mess of blood and tissue as Ben rose to his feet and watched George screaming in agony. His hands and the knife were drenched in blood—soaked in revenge.

Ben covered George’s mouth with duct tape and stepped on the stump where his genitals were, grinding his sneakers into it. I grabbed my popcorn and popped fluffy pieces in my mouth while the pedophile bled out in his living room and sobbed from the pain. Blood poured on the carpet and Ben laughed and kept twisting his heel into the spot where George’s dick had been.

 “You like hurting kids?” Ben whispered. “Well now you won’t be doing that anymore.”

I blinked in surprise when he chopped off George’s hands. That drew another shrill scream and the blood loss was impressive—it gushed out like a waterfall, thick and bright red. Ben crouched on George and went back to berating him for humping kids in his lap while I chowed down on popcorn. Neat.

George didn’t last long. I strolled around his corpse when he stopped twitching and Ben gathered the cock and balls in a plastic bag to put in his cooler. Messy.

 “I’ll clean up,” I yawned.

Ben frowned and watched me scrub our fingerprints from the kitchen, door, and George’s cooling body. I did my best to find loose hairs and collected a few of mine before we left. I brought my popcorn along and waited to feel bad for letting a man be murdered, but it didn’t come.

We went back to the RV. Ben chucked the dick in the freezer and I wandered away from him, polishing off my popcorn, when he wrapped his arms around me from behind.

 “You’re so fucking hot.” He ripped the popcorn bag out of my hands and threw it aside. “So fucking hot. You were so calm when I killed him—I fucking love you, Rey.”

I laughed and didn’t resist when he bent me over our bed. Ben unzipped his pants and tangled his long fingers in my hair and tugged my leggings past my thighs. I panted and smiled and squirmed onto the bed, wriggling away from him, then turned on my back. He grabbed my calves and dragged me back to the edge of the bed, so I planted my feet on his chest to keep him from coming closer.

Ben didn’t smile back. He pulled my ankles apart and climbed into bed on top of me, drawing more laughs, then wrestled me on my stomach underneath him. I panted into the sheets as he adjusted behind me, taking deep breaths, then tried to get away from him again.

 “Where do you think _you’re_ going?” he demanded, yanking on my hair.

 “…Away.”

 “No, you’re not.”

Sex was becoming increasingly violent since the whole ‘rape me’ thing. Sometimes I’d wake up with Ben already trying to push inside me and he’d whisper that he thought I was awake. I didn’t care. I’d press against his chest and feel his warm breath on my ear, and I still felt safe.

We drove off after we were done and I sat next to Ben up front with his shirt and my panties on. He didn’t have a shirt on, like usual, and glanced at me examining my nails.

 “Quit biting them,” he said.

 “Gotta. They look so chewy and delicious.”

He laughed. “You’re fucking gross, Rey.”

The rest of the drive wasn’t as exciting. Ben didn’t buy pregnancy tests until we were in Maine, waiting to meet up with his pal Felix Weiss before going to the house of horrors. I lazily smacked my gum, lounging on the bed with my cell phone and Ben’s shades on, while he paced and waited for Felix to show. He was getting nervous as hell.

And show he did. Felix knocked on the RV door and a minute later I met one of Ben’s ‘friends,’ not including the ones he was going to see further up in Maine. I drew down my sunglasses and sized him up, still a judgmental bitch at my core.

Felix was shorter than Ben, but had a jawline that could probably cut a diamond. His eyes were big and dark and expressive, and he had curly black hair with a five o’clock shadow. His skin was a deep tan and he was wearing a black sweater and jeans. He was attractive, but I preferred my six-foot-three serial killer with bear paws.

Ben sidled up to the bed and ran his fingers through my hair. He looked like a proud puppy. “Felix, this is Rey. We’re having a baby together.”

I smacked my gum and lazily offered my hand for a shake. “Rey Kenobi: Ben Solo’s future baby mama, journalist, and Bitchy Hot Girl—nice to meet you.”

 “…Yeah, you too.” Felix shook my hand, laughing awkwardly. “Uh… You don’t look like Ben’s type.”

Ben nodded. “She’s downgrading.”

 “I really am,” I agreed, flopping over on my back again. I poked Ben with my foot until he started rubbing it. “But I’m hot enough for both of us and we’ll have hot babies.”

Ben beamed down at me, again giving me that look like I was the center of the universe. I smiled back and pushed his shades back up the bridge of my nose.

The two of them chatted for a while and I ignored the conversation, opting to scroll through Facebook instead. Ben sat down by my feet and ran his fingertips along my legs after I got sick of having my foot rub. Felix watched us like he was waiting for me to disappear or start screaming.

They were boring me, so I grabbed a pregnancy test and strolled to the bathroom to check. I’d missed my period, but I also just stopped taking birth control, so my hormones were all wacked out. Ben noticed me walk off with it and immediately rose from the bed to follow me in the middle of his conversation with Felix.

I turned at the bathroom door, scowling. “You’re not watching me piss on a stick.”

 “But—”

 “No.” I shut the door in his face. “You can come in when I’m done peeing, freak.”

Ben paced until I let him in after I washed my hands. Felix wandered up the hall to hang out and watch, dark eyes still curiously assessing us. I sat on the bathroom counter with Ben between my knees, kissing my neck and hugging me, and hoped he wouldn’t be so dramatic for every single test. It’d be negative; probably the first of many. Getting pregnant wasn’t always easy and part of me thought it would never happen to me, no matter what.

We waited the two minutes in silence and I kept hiding the view window to piss Ben off. He snatched it from me, green eyes scanning the stick, and covered his mouth.

 “It’s going to take a while,” I drawled, leaning closer to look, “you can’t get emotional—”

The word ‘PREGNANT’ in big purple letters glared back at me defiantly and shut me the fuck up.


End file.
